JHBRHllI 



f 






1 1 1 



i ,: ,,,■.. .1. ', ■ 



V 



Hi 



■ 

■ ■ 

■ 
■ 

■ 

I 

^»:lt:iHH HI 



mm 



M 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DD 



HSHLn 
aHHnH 



1 



Hi 



■■H 



■M 



^H 



:j 



& 







? ^ 











^ 6« 



<-+<? 



%. * • « ° A 
* *-* '- <^k *9 • " * 

jV c ° " • * <^ o^ . «■ " 



o_ * 











"O, a"* 















W 




























'o . * * A <^ 


















-of 



A PILGRIMAGE OF PLEASURE 



This Editon of "A Pilgrimage of Pleasure: 
Essays and Studies" by Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne is limited to 500 copies, printed from type. 



A PILGRIMAGE 
OF PLEASURE 

ESS A YS AND STUDIES 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 

WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY 




RICHARD G. BADGER 

Wbz <@orf)am Jfre** 

BOSTON 



Copyright, 1913, by Richard G. Badger 
' All rights reserved 



)qi3 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



/ 



CI.A358038 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 9 

II Dead Love 25 

III Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mai . . 85 

IV Simeon Solomon: Notes on His "Vision of 

Love" and Other Studies ,., ,., ,., . . 49 

V Mr. George Meredith's "Modern Love" . . 71 

VI Charles Dickens 79 

VII An Unknown Poet 113 

VIII John Nichol's "Hannibal" 143 

IX A Bibliography of the Works of Algernon 

Charles Swinburne, by Edward J. O'Brien . 153 



I. 

A PILGRIMAGE OF PLEASURE 

1864 



A PILGRIMAGE OF 
PLEASURE 

Dramatis Persona? 



Pleasure, 


Gluttony, the Vice, 


Youth, 


Vain Delight, 


Life, 


Sapience 


Discretion, 


Death. 



Pleasure. All children of men, give good heed 

unto me, 
That am of my kind very virtue bodily, 
Turn ye from following of lies and Vain Delight 
That avaunteth herself there she hath but little 

right: 
Set your hearts upon goodly things that I shall 

you show, 
For the end of her ways is death and very woe. 
Youth. Away from me, thou Sapience, thou 

noddy, thou green fool! 
What ween ye I be as a little child in school? 
Ye are as an old crone that moweth by a fire, 
A bob with a chestnut is all thine heart's desire. 
I am in mine habit like to Bacchus the high god, 
I reck not a rush of thy rede nor of thy rod. 
Life. Bethink thee, good Youth, and take 

Sapience to thy wife, 



10 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

For but a little while hath a man delight of Life. 
I am as a flame that lighteth thee one hour ; 
She hath fruit enow, I have but a fleeting flower. 
Discretion. For pity of Youth I may weep 

withouten measure, 
That is gone a great way as pilgrim after Pleasure, 
For her (most bold queen) shall he never have in 

sight, 
Who is bounden all about with bonds of Vain 

Delight. 
That false fiend to follow in field he is full fain, 
For love of her sweet mouth he shall bide most 

bitter pain. 
The sweeter she singeth, the lesser is her trust, 
She will bring him full low to deadly days and dust. 
Gluttony. Ow, I am so full of flesh my skin 

goeth nigh to crack ! 
I would not for a pound I bore my body on my 

back. 
I wis ye wot well what manner of man am I ; 
One of ye help me to a saddle by and bye. 
I am waxen over-big, for I floter on my feet; 
I would I had here a piece of beef, a worthy meat. 
I have been a blubberling this two and forty year, 
And yet for all this I live and make good cheer. 
Fain Delight. I wot ye will not bite upon my 

snaffle, good Youth; 
Ye go full smoothly now, ye amble well forsooth. 
Youth. My sweet life and lady, my love and 

mine heart's lief, 
One kiss of your fair sweet mouth it slayeth all 

men's grief. 



A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 11 

One sight of your goodly eyes it bringeth all men 
ease. 
Gluttony. Ow, I would I had a manchet or a 

piece of cheese I 
Vain Delight. Lo, where lurketh a lurden 1 
that is kinsman of mine; 
Ho, Gluttony, I wis ye are drunken without wine. 
Youth. We have gone by many lands, and 
many grievous ways, 
And yet have we not found this Pleasure all these 

days. 
Sometimes a lightening all about her have we seen, 
A glittering of her garments among the fieldes 

green ; 
Sometimes the waving of her hair that is right 

sweet, 
A lifting of her eyelids, or a shining of her feet, 
Or either in sleeping or in waking have we heard 
A rustling of raiment or a whispering of a word, 
Or a noise of pleasant water running over a waste 

place, 
Yet have I not beheld her, nor known her very 
face. 
Vain Delight. What, thou very knave, and 

how reckonest thou of me? 
Youth. Nay, though thou be goodly, I trow 

thou art not she. 
Vain Delight. I would that thou wert hanged 
in a halter by the neck, 
From my face to my feet there is neither flaw nor 
fleck, 

i Lurden: a lout, lubber. 



12 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

There is none happy man but he that sips and clips 
My goodly stately body and the love upon my lips. 
Great kings have worshipped me, and served me 

on their knees, 
Yet for thy sake I wis, have I set light by these. 
Youth. What pratest thou of Pleasure? I 

wot well it am I. 
Gluttony. Ow! I would I had a marchpane or 

a plover in a pie! 
What needeth a man look far for that is near at 

hand? 
What needeth him ear the sea, or fish upon dry 

land? 
For whether it be flesh, or whether it be fish, 
Lo, it lurketh full lowly in a little dish. 

Sapience. I charge thee, O thou Youth, thou 

repent thee on this tide, 
For but an hour or twain, shall thy life and thou 

abide ; 
Turn thee, I say, yea turn thee, before it be the 

night, 
Take thine heart in thine hand, and slay thy Vain 

Delight, 
Before thy soul and body in sudden and sunder be 

rent. 
\Youth. Nay, though I be well weary, yet will I 

not repent, 
Nor will I slay my love; lo, this is all in brief. 
Vain Delight. I beseech thee now begone, thou 

ragged hood, thou thief! 
Wherefore snuff est thou so, like one smelling of 

mustard? 



'A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 13 

Gluttony. Ow, methinks I could eat a goodly 

quaking custard. 
Youth. Peace, thou paunch, I pray; thou say- 

est ever the same. 
Vain Delight. Lo, her coats be all bemired! 
this is a goodly dame, 
She pranceth with her chin up, as one that is full 
nice. 
Gluttony. Ow, I would I had a pear with a 
pretty point of spice, 
A comfit with a caudle is a comfortable meat ; 
A cony is the best beast of all that run on feet. 
I love well buttered ale, I would I had one 

drop; 
I pray thee, Mistress Sapience, hast thou never a 
sugar sop? 
Sapience. Depart from me, thou sturdy swine, 

thou hast no part in me! 
Gluttony. Ow, I wist well there was little fair 
fellowship in thee. 
Good Mistress Discretion, ye be both lief and fair, 
Of thy dish, I pray thee, some scrapings thou me 
spare. 
Discretion. My dish, thou foolish beast, for thy 
mouth it is not meet ; 
I feed on gracious thought, and on prayer that is 

most sweet, 
I eat of good desires, I drink good words for wine; 
Thou art fed on husks of death among the snouts 

of swine; 
My drink is clear contemplation, I feed on fasting 
hours, 



14 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

I commune with the most high stars, and all the 

noble flowers, 
With all the days and nights, and with love that 
is their queen. 
Gluttony. Ow, of this communication it recks 
me never a bean ! 
Shall one drink the night for wine, and feed upon 

the dawn? 
Yet had I rather have in hand a cantle of brawn. 
Sapience. O Youth, wilt thou not turn thee, 

and follow that is right? 
Youth. Nay, while I have my living, I forsake 
not Vain Delight. 
Till when my hairs are grey, I put her away from 
me. 
Vain Delight. Nay, but in that day will I with- 
draw my face from thee. 
Out, out, mother mumble, thou art both rotten and 
raw. 
Gluttony. I will reach thee, if I may, a buff et 

with my paw. 
Vain Delight. What, wilt thou take my king- 
dom? have this for all thy pains. 
Gluttony. Ow, I would I had a toast to butter 

with thy brains. 
Life. Lo, this is the last time that ever we 
twain shall meet, 
I am lean of my body and feeble of my feet ; 
My goodly beauty is barren, fruit shall it never 

bear, 
But thorns and bitter ashes that are cast upon 
mine hair; 



A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 15 

My glory is all gone, and my good time overpast, 
Seeing all my beauty cometh to one colour at the 

last, 
A deadly dying colour of a faded face. 
I say to thee, repent thee; thou hast but little 

space. 
Youth. What manner of man art thou? It 

seems thou hast seen some strife. 
Life. I am thy body's shadow, and the likeness 

of thy life, 
The sorrowful similitude of all thy sorrow and sin; 
Wherefore, I pray thee, open all thine heart and 

let me in, 
Lest, if thou shut out good counsel, thou be thy- 
self shut out — 
Gluttony. Ow, though I be lusty I have made 

them low to lout, 
My lungs be broken in twain with running over 

fast, 
With beating of their bodies mine own sides have 

I brast; 
The heaving of mine heart it is a galling grief. 
Ow, what makes thee so lean and wan? {to Life) 

I trow thou lackest beef. 
Vain Delight. How, what is this knave, trow? 
Youth. He saith his name is Life. 
Vain Delight. By the faith of my fair body I 

will give him grief to wife! 
In his lips there is no blood, in his throat there is 

no breath. 
Call ye this Life, by my hood? I think it be liker 

Death. 



16 W A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Life. It is thou, thou cursed witch, hast bereft 

me of mine ease, 
That I gasp with my lips and halt upon my knees. 
Death. Thou hast lived overlong without tak- 
ing thought for me; 
Lb, here is now an end of thy Vain Delight and 

thee. 
Thou that wert gluttonous shalt eat the dust for 

bread, 
Thou that wearest gold shalt wear grass above 

thine head; 
Thou that wert full big shalt be shrunken to a 

span, 
Thou shalt be a loathly worm that wert a lordly 

man. 
Thou that madest thy bed of silk shalt have a bed 

of mould, 
Thou whom furs have covered shalt be clad upon 

with cold, 
Thou that lovedst honey, with gall shalt thou be 

fed, 
Thou that wert alive shalt presently be dead. 
Youth. O strong Death! be merciful! I quake 

with dread of thee. 
Death. Nay, thou hast dwelt long with Life; 

now shalt thou sleep with me. 
Gluttony. Ow, ow, for very fear my flesh doth 

melt and dwindle, 
My sides and my shanks be leaner than a spindle; 
Now foul fall his fingers that wound up the thread, 
Good Master Death, do me no hurt; I wis I am 

but dead. 



A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 17 

Now may I drink my sobs, and chew upon my 

sighs, 
And feed my foolish body with the fallings of mine 

eyes. 
Vain Delight. Mine eyes are turned to tears, 

my fair mouth filled with moan, 
My cheeks are ashen colour, I grovel and I 

groan, 
My love is turned to loathing, my day to a weary 

night, 
Now I wot I am not Pleasure, I am but Vain De- 
light! 
Youth. O Death, show pity upon me, and 

spare me for a space. 
Death. Nay, thou hast far to go; rise up, un- 
cover thy face. 
Youth. O Death, abide for a little, but till 

it be the night. 
Death. Nay, thy day is done; look up, there 

is no light. 
Youth. O Death, forbear me yet till an hour 

be over and done, 
Death. Thine hour is over and wasted; behold, 

there is no more sun! 
Youth. Nay, Death, but I repent me. 
Death. Here have thou this and hold. 
Youth. O Death, thou art keen and bitter, 

thine hands are wonder-cold! 
Death. Fare forth now without word, ye have 

tarried over measure. 
Youth. Alas, that ever I went on Pilgrimage 

of Pleasure, 



18 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

And wist not what she was; now am I the wearier 

wight. 
Lo, this is the end of all, this cometh of Vain De- 
light! 
Death. O foolish people! O ye that rejoice 

for a three days' breath, 
Lift up your eyes unto me, lest ye perish: behold, 

I am Death! 
When your hearts are exalted with laughter, and 

kindled with love as with fire, 
Neither look ye before ye nor after, but feed and 

are filled with desire. 
Lo, without trumpets I come: without ushers I 

follow behind: 
And the voice of the strong men is dumb ; and the 

eyes of the wise men are blind. 
Your mouths were hot with meat, your lips were 

sweet with wine, 
There was gold upon your feet, on your heads was 

gold most fine: 
For blasts of wind and rain ye shook not neither 

shrunk, 
Ye were clothed with man's pain, with man's blood 

ye were drunk; 
Little heed ye had of tears and poor men's 

sighs, 
In your glory ye were glad, and ye glittered with 

your eyes. 
Ye said each man in his heart, "I shall live and 

see good days." 
Lo, as mire and clay thou art, even as mire on 

weary ways. 



A "Pilgrimage of Pleasure 19 

Ye said each man, "I am fair, lo, my life in me 

stands fast." 
Turn ye, weep and rend your hair ; what abideth at 

the last? 
For behold ye are all made bare, and your glory 

is over and past. 
Ye were covered with fatness and sleep; ye 

wallow'd to left and to right, 
Now may ye wallow and weep: day is gone, and 

behold it is night! 
With grief were all ye gotten, to bale were all ye 

born, 
Ye are all as red leaves rotten, or as the beaten 

corn. 
What will one of you say? had ye eyes and would 

not see? 
Had ye harps and would not play? Yet shall ye 

play for me. 
Had ye ears and would not hear? Had ye feet 

and would not go? 
Had ye wits and would not fear? Had ye seed 

and would not sow? 
Had ye hands and would not wring? Had ye 

wheels and would not spin? 
Had ye lips and would not sing? was there no song 

found therein? 
A bitter, a bitter thing there is comen upon you 

for sin. 
Alas! your kingdom and lands! alas! your men 

and their might! 
Alas! the strength of your hands and the days of 

your Vain Delight! 



20 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Alas ! the words that were spoken, sweet words on 

a pleasant tongue! 
Alas! your harps that are broken, the harps that 

were carven and strung! 
Alas! the light in your eyes, the gold in your gol- 
den hair! 
Alas! your sayings wise, and the goodly things ye 

ware! 
Alas! your glory! alas! the sound of your names 

among men! 
Behold, it is come to pass, ye shall sleep and arise 

not again. 
Dust shall fall on your face, and dust shall hang 

on your hair; 
Ye shall sleep without shifting of place, and shall 

be no more as ye were; 
Ye shall never open your mouth; ye shall never lift 

up your head; 
Ye shall look not to north or to south; life is done, 

and behold, ye are dead! 
With your hand ye shall not threat; with your 

throat ye shall not sing. 
Yea, ye that are living yet, ye shall each be a 

grievous thing. 
Ye shall each fare under ground, ye shall lose both 

speech and breath; 
Without sight ye shall see, without sound ye shall 

hear, and shall know I am Death. 



A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 21 

EPILOGUE 

Spoken by Pleasure 

The ending of Youth and of Vain Delight 

Full plainly here ye all have seen ; 
Wherefore I pray you day and night, 

While winter is wan and summer is green, 
Ye keep the end hereof in sight, 

Lest in that end ye gather teen ; 
.And all this goodly Christmas light, 

Ye praise and magnify our Queen, 
Whiles that your lips have breath; 
And all your life-days out of measure, 
Serve her with heart's and body's treasure, 
And pray god give her praise and pleasure, 
Both of her life and death. 



II 

DEAD LOVE 

1862 



DEAD LOVE 

ABOUT the time of the great troubles in 
France, that fell out between the part- 
ies of Armagnac and of Burgundy, there 
was slain in a fight in Paris a follower 
of the Duke John, who was a good knight called 
Messire Jacques d'Aspremont. This Jacques 
was a very fair and strong man, hardy of his hands, 
and" before he was slain he did many things won- 
derful and of great courage, and forty of the folk 
of the other party he slew, and many of these were 
great captains, of whom the chief and the worth- 
iest was Messire Olivier de Bois-Perce; but at last 
he was shot in the neck with an arrow, so that be- 
tween the nape and the apple the flesh was cleanly 
cloven in twain. And when he was dead his men 
drew forth his body of the fierce battle, and 
covered it with a fair woven cloak. Then the 
people of Armagnac, taking good heart because 
of his death, fell the more heavily upon his fol- 
lowers, and slew very many of them. And a cer- 
tain soldier, named Amaury de Jacqueville, whom 
they called Courtebarbe, did best of all that party ; 
for, crying out with a great noise, "Sus, sus!" he 
brought up the men after him, and threw them for- 
ward into the hot part of the fighting, where there 
was a sharp clamour; and this Amaury, laughing 
and crying out as a man that took a great delight 
in such matters of war, made of himself more noise 

25 



26 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

with smiting and with shouting than any ten, and 
they of Burgundy were astonished and beaten 
down. And when he was weary, and his men had 
got the upper hand of those of Burgundy, he left 
off slaying, and beheld where Messire d'Aspre- 
mont was covered up with his cloak; and he lay 
just across the door of Messire Olivier, whom the 
said Jacques had slain, who was also a cousin of 
Amaury's. Then said Amaury: 

"Take up now the body of this dead fellow, and 
carry it into the house; for my cousin Madame 
Yolande shall have great delight to behold the face 
of the fellow dead by whom her husband has got 
his end, and it shall make the tiding sweeter to 
her." 

So they took up this dead knight Messire Jac- 
ques, and carried him into a fair chamber lighted 
with broad windows, and herein sat the wife of 
Olivier, who was called Yolande de Craon, and she 
was akin far off to Pierre de Craon, who would 
have slain the Constable. And Amaury said to 
her: 

"Fair and dear cousin, and my good lady, we 
give you for your husband slain the body of him 
that slew my cousin; make the best cheer that you 
may, and comfort yourself that he has found a 
good death and a good friend to do justice on his 
slayer ; for this man was a good knight, and I that 
have revenged him account myself none of the 
worst." 

And with this Amaury and his people took leave 
of her. Then Yolande, being left alone, began at 



Dead Love 27, 

first to weep grievously, and so much that she was 
heavy and weary; and afterward she looked upon 
the face of Jacques d'Aspremont, and held one of 
his hands with hers, and said: 

"Ah, false thief and coward! it is great pity thou 
wert not hung on a gallows, who hast slain by 
treachery the most noble knight of the world, and 
to me the most loving and the faithfulest man 
alive, and that never did any discourtesy to any 
man, and was the most single and pure lover that 
ever a married lady had to be her knight, and never 
said any word to me but sweet words. Ah, false 
coward! there was never such a knight of thy kin." 

Then, considering his face earnestly, she saw 
that it was a fair face enough, and by seeming the 
face of a good knight; and she repented of her 
bitter words, saying with herself: 

"Certainly this one, too, was a good man and 
valiant," and was sorry for his death. 

And she pulled out the arrow-head that Was 
broken, and closed up the wound of his neck with 
ointments. And then beholding his dead open 
eyes, she fell into a great torrent of weeping, so 
that her tears fell all over his face and throat. 
And all the time of this bitter sorrow she thought 
how goodly a man this Jacques must have been 
in his life, who being dead had such power upon 
her pity. And for compassion of his great beauty 
she wept so exceedingly and long that she fell 
down upon his body in a swoon, embracing him, 
and so lay the space of two hours with her face 
against his; and being awaked she had no other 



28 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

desire but only to behold him again, and so all 
that day neither ate nor slept at all, but for the 
most part lay and wept. And afterward, out of 
her love, she caused the body of this knight to be 
preserved with spice, and made him a golden 
coffin open at the top, and clothed him with the 
fairest clothes she could get, and had this coffin al- 
ways by her bed in her chamber. And when this 
was done she sat down over against him and held 
his arms about her neck, weeping, and she said: 

"Ah, Jacques! although alive I was not worthy, 
so that I never saw the beauty and goodness of 
your living body with my sorrowful eyes, yet now 
being dead, I thank God that I have this grace to 
behold you. Alas, Jacques! you have no right 
now to discern what things are beautiful, there- 
fore you may now love me as well as another, for 
with dead men there is no difference of women. 
But, truly, although I were the fairest of all Chris- 
tian women that now is, I were in nowise worthy 
to love you; nevertheless, have compassion upon 
me that for your sake have forgotten the most 
noble husband of the world." 

And this Yolande, that made such complaining 
of love to a dead man, was one of the fairest ladies 
of all that time, and of great reputation ; and there 
were many good men that loved her greatly, and 
would fain have had some favour at her hands ; of 
whom she made no account, saying always, that 
her dead lover was better than many lovers living. 
Then certain people said that she was bewitched; 
and one of these was Amaury. And they would 



Dead Love 29 

have taken the body to burn it, that the charm 
might be brought to an end; for they said that a 
demon had entered in and taken it in possession; 
which she hearing fell into extreme rage, and said 
that if her lover were alive, there was not so good 
a knight among them, that he should undertake the 
charge of that saying; at which speech of hers 
there was great laughter. And upon a night there 
came into her house Amaury and certain others, 
that were minded to see this matter for themselves. 
And no man kept the doors ; for all her people had 
gone away, saving only a damsel that remained 
with her; and the doors stood open, as in a house 
where there is no man. And they stood in the 
doorway of her chamber, and heard her say this 
that ensues: — 

"O most fair and perfect knight, the best that 
ever Was in any time of battle, or in any company 
of ladies, and the most courteous man, have pity 
upon me, most sorrowful woman and handmaid. 
For in your life you had some other lady to love 
you, and were to her a most true and good lover; 
but now you have none other but me only, and I 
am not worthy that you should so much as kiss me 
on my sad lips, wherein is all this lamentation. 
And though your own lady were the fairer and 
the more worthy, yet consider, for God's pity and 
mine, how she has forgotten the love of your body 
and the kindness of your espousals, and lives easily 
with some other man, and is wedded to him with 
all honour; but I have neither ease nor honour, 
and yet I am your true maiden and servant." 



30 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

And then she embraced and kissed him many- 
times. And Amaury was very wroth, but he re- 
frained himself: and his friends were troubled and 
full of wonder. Then they beheld how she held 
his body between her arms, and kissed him in the 
neck with all her strength ; and after a certain time 
it seemed to them that the body of Jacques moved 
and sat up ; and she was no whit amazed, but arose 
up with him, embracing him. And Jacques said 
to her: 

"I beseech you, now that you would make a 
covenant with me, to love me always." 

And she bowed her head suddenly, and said 
nothing. 

Then said Jacques: 

"Seeing you have done so much for love of me, 
we twain shall never go in sunder: and for this 
reason has God given back to me the life of my 
mortal body." 

And after this they had the greatest joy to- 
gether, and the most perfect solace that may be 
imagined: and she sat and beheld him, and many 
times fell into a little quick laughter for her great 
pleasure and delight. 

Then came Amaury suddenly into the chamber, 
and caught his sword into his hand, and said to her: 

"Ah, wicked leman, now at length is come the 
end of thy horrible love and of thy life at once;" 
and smote her through the two sides with his sword, 
so that she fell down, and with a great sigh full 
unwillingly delivered up her spirit, which was no 
sooner fled out of her perishing body, but immedi- 



Bead Love 31 

ately the soul departed also out of the body of 
her lover, and he became as one that had been all 
those days dead. And the next day the people 
caused their two bodies to be burned openly in the 
place where witches were used to be burned: and 
it is reported by some that an evil spirit was seen 
to come out of the mouth of Jacques d'Aspremont, 
with a most pitiful cry, like the cry of a hurt beast. 
By which thing all men knew that the soul of this 
woman, for the folly of her sinful and most strange 
affection, was thus evidently given over to the de- 
lusion of the evil one and the pains of condemna- 
tion. 



Ill 

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: LES 
FLEURS DU MAL 

1862 



CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: LES 
FLEURS DU MAL 

IT is now some time since France has turned 
out any new poet of very high note or im- 
portance; the graceful, slight, somewhat 
thin spun classical work of M. Theodore de 
Banville hardly carries weight enough to tell across 
the Channel ; indeed, the best of this writer's books, 
in spite of exquisite humorous character and a 
most flexible and brilliant style, is too thoroughly 
Parisian to bear transplanting at all. French 
poetry of the present date, taken at its highest, is 
not less effectually hampered by tradition and the 
taste of the greater number of readers than our 
own is. A French poet is expected to believe in 
philanthropy, and break off on occasion in the 
middle of his proper work to lend a shove forward 
to some theory of progress. The critical students 
there, as well as here, judging by the books they 
praise and the advice they proffer, seem to have 
pretty well forgotten that a poet's business is pre- 
sumably to write good verses, and by no means to 
redeem the age and remould society. No other 
form of art is so pestered with this impotent ap- 
petite for meddling in quite extraneous matters; 
but the mass of readers seem actually to think that 
a poem is the better for containing a moral lesson 
or assisting in a tangible and material good work. 
The courage and sense of a man who at such a 

35 



36 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

time ventures to profess and act on the conviction 
that the art of poetry has absolutely nothing to do 
with didactic matter at all, are proof enough of the 
wise and serious manner in which he is likely to 
handle the materials of his art. From a critic who 
has put forward the just and sane view of this 
matter with a consistent eloquence, one may well 
expect to get as perfect and careful poetry as he 
can give. 

To some English readers the name of M. Baude- 
laire may be known rather through his admirable 
translations, and the criticisms on American and 
English writers appended to these, and framing 
them in fit and sufficient commentary, than by his 
volume of poems, which, perhaps, has hardly yet 
had time to make its way among us. That it will 
in the long run fail of its meed of admiration, 
whether here or in France, we do not believe. Im- 
peded at starting by a foolish and shameless prose- 
cution, the first edition was, it appears, withdrawn 
before anything like a fair hearing had been ob- 
tained for it. The book now comes before us with 
a few of the original poems cancelled, but with im- 
portant additions. Such as it now is, to sum up 
the merit and meaning of it is not easy to do in a 
few sentences. Like all good books, and all work 
of any original savour and strength, it will be long 
a debated point of argument, vehemently im- 
pugned and eagerly upheld. 

We believe that M. Baudelaire's first publica- 
tions were his essays on the contemporary art of 
France, written now many years since. In these 



Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs &u Mai 37 

early writings there is already such admirable 
judgment, vigour of thought and style, and ap- 
preciative devotion to the subject, that the worth 
of his own future work in art might have been 
foretold even then. He has more delicate power 
of verse than almost any man living, after Victor 
Hugo, Browning, and (in his lyrics) Tennyson. 
The sound of his metres suggests colour and per- 
fume. His perfect workmanship makes every 
subject admirable and respectable. Throughout 
the -chief part of this book, he has chosen to dwell 
mainly upon sad and strange things — the weari- 
ness of pain and the bitterness of pleasure — the 
perverse happiness and wayward sorrows of ex- 
ceptional people. It has the languid lurid beauty 
of close and threatening weather — a heavy heated 
temperature, with dangerous hothouse scents in it; 
thick shadow of cloud about it, and fire of molten 
light. It is quite clear of all whining and windy 
lamentation ; there is nothing of the blubbering and 
shrieking style long since exploded. The writer 
delights in problems, and has a natural leaning to 
obscure and sorrowful things. Failure and sor- 
row, next to physical beauty and perfection of 
sound or scent, seem to have an infinite attraction 
for him. In some points he resembles Keats, or 
still more his chosen favourite among modern 
poets, Edgar Poe; at times, too, his manner of 
thought has a relish of Marlowe, and even the 
sincerer side of Byron. From Theophile Gautier, 
to whom the book is dedicated, he has caught the 
habit of a faultless and studious simplicity; but, in- 



38 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

deed, it seems merely natural to him always to use 
the right word and the right rhyme. How su- 
premely musical and flexible a perfect artist in 
writing can make the French language, any chance 
page of the book is enough to prove; every de- 
scription, the slightest and shortest even, has a 
special mark on it of the writer's keen and peculiar 
power. The style is sensuous and weighty; the 
sights seen are steeped most often in sad light and 
sullen colour. As instances of M. Baudelaire's 
strength and beauty of manner, one might take 
especially the poems headed Le Masque, Parfum 
Eocotique, La Chevelure, Les Sept Vieillards, Les 
Petites Vieilles, Brumes et Pluies; of his perfect 
mastery in description, and sharp individual draw- 
ing of character and form, the following stray 
verses plucked out at random may stand for a 
specimen : — 

"Sur ta chevelure profonde 
Aux acres parfums, 
Mer odorante et vagabonde 
Aux Hots bleus et bruns, 

"Comme un navire qui s'eveille 
Au vent du matin, 
Mon ame reveuse appareille 
Pour un ciel lointain. 

"Tes yeux cm rien ne se revele 
De doux ni d'amer 
Sont deux bi j oux f roids ou. se mele 
L'or avec le fer. 



Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mai 39 

"Et ton corps se penche et s'allonge 
Comme un fin vaisseau 
Qui roule bord sur bord et plonge 
Ses vergues dans l'eau." 

The whole poem is worth study for its vigorous 
beauty and the careful facility of its expression. 
Perhaps, though, the sonnet headed Causerie is a 
still completer specimen of the author's power. 
The way in which the sound and sense are suddenly 
broken off and shifted, four lines from the end, is 
wonderful for effect and success. M. Baudelaire's 
mastery of the sonnet form is worth remarking as 
a test of his natural bias towards such forms of 
verse as are most nearly capable of perfection. 
In a book of this sort, such a leaning of the writer's 
mind is almost necessary. The matters treated of 
will bear no rough or hasty handling. Only su- 
preme excellence of words will suffice to grapple 
with and fitly render the effects of such material. 
Not the luxuries of pleasure in their simple first 
form, but the sharp and cruel enjoyments of pain, 
the acrid relish of suffering felt or inflicted, the 
sides on which nature looks unnatural, go to make 
up the stuff and substance of this poetry. Very 
good material they make, too; but evidently such 
things are unfit for rapid or careless treatment. 
The main charm of the book is, upon the whole, 
that nothing is wrongly given, nothing capable of 
being re-written or improved on its own ground. 
Concede the starting point, and you cannot have 
a better runner. 

Thus, even of the loathsomest bodily putrescence 



40 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

and decay he can make some noble use; pluck out 
its meaning and secret, even its beauty, in a certain 
way, from actual carrion ; as here, of the flies bred 
in a carcase. 

"Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague; 
Ou s'elancaint en petillant. 
On eut dit que le corps, enfle d'un souffle vague, 
Vivait en se multipliant. 

"Et ce monde rendait une etrange musique, 

Comme l'eau courante et le vent, 
Ou le grain qu'un vanneur d'un mouvement rhythmique 
Agite et tourne dans son van." 

Another of this poet's noblest sonnets is that A 
une Passante, comparable with a similar one of 
Keats, "Time's sea hath been five years at its slow 
ebb," but superior for directness of point and 
forcible reality. Here for once the beauty of a 
poem is rather passionate than sensuous. Com- 
pare the delicate emblematic manner in which 
Keats winds up his sonnet to this sharp perfect 
finale : — 

"Fugitive beaute 
Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaitre, 
Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'eternite? 
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici, trop tard! jamais peut-etre! 
Car j 'ignore ou tu fuis, tu ne sais ou je vais, 
O toi que j'eusse aimee ; 6 toi qui le savais!" 

There is noticeable also in M. Baudelaire's work 
a quality of drawing which recalls the exquisite 
power in the same way of great French artists now 
living. His studies are admirable for truth and 



Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mai 41 

grace; his figure-painting has the ease and 
strength, the trained skill, and beautiful gentle 
justice of manner, which come out in such pictures 
as the Source of Ingres, or that other splendid 
study by Flandrin, of a curled-up naked figure 
under full soft hot light, now exhibiting here. 1 
These verses of Baudelaire's are as perfect and 
good as either. 

". . . Tes sourcils mediants 
Te donnent un air etrange, 
Qui n'est part celui cTun ange, 
Sorciere aux yeux allechants 

"Sur ta chair le parfum rode 
Comme autour d'un encensoir ; 
Tu charmes comme le soir, 
Nymphe tenebreuse et chaude. 

"Le desert et la foret 
Embaument tes tresses rudes ; 
Ta tete a les attitudes 
De l'enigme et du secret. 

"Tes hanches sont amour euses 
De ton dos et de tes seins, 
Et tu ravis les coussins 
Par tes poses langoureuses." 

Nothing can beat that as a piece of beautiful 
drawing. 

It may be worth while to say something about 
the moral and meaning of many among these 
poems. Certain critics, who will insist on going 
into this matter, each man as deep as his small 

i Written in 1862.— Ed. 



42 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

leaden plummet will reach, have discovered what 
they call a paganism on the spiritual side of this 
author's tone of thought. Stripped of its coating 
of jargon, this may mean that the poet spoken of 
endeavours to look at most things with the eye of 
an old-world poet; that he aims at regaining the 
clear and simple view of writers content to believe 
in the beauty of material subjects. To us, if this 
were the meaning of these people, we must say 
it seems a foolish one; for there is not one of these 
poems that could have been written in a time when 
it was not the fashion to dig for moral motives and 
conscious reasons. Poe, for example, has written 
poems without any moral meaning at all; there is 
not one poem of the Fleurs du Mai which has not a 
distinct and vivid background of morality to it. 
Only this moral side of the book is not thrust for- 
ward in the foolish and repulsive manner of a half- 
taught artist; the background, as we called it, is 
not out of drawing. If any reader could extract 
from any poem a positive spiritual medicine — if he 
could swallow a sonnet like a moral prescription — 
than clearly the poet supplying these intellectual 
drugs would be a bad artist; indeed, no real artist, 
but a huckster and vendor of miscellaneous wares. 
But those who will look for them may find morali- 
ties in plenty behind every poem of M. Baude- 
laire's; such poems especially as Une Martyr e. 
Like a mediaeval preacher, when he has drawn the 
heathen love, he puts sin on its right hand and 
death on its left. It is riot his or any artist's busi- 
ness to warn against evil; but certainly he does not 



Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du M al 43 

exhort to it, knowing well enough that the one 
fault is as great as the other. 

But into all this we do not advise any one to 
enter who can possibly keep out of it. When a 
book has been so violently debated over, so hauled 
this way and that by contentious critics, the one 
intent on finding that it means something mis- 
chievous, and the other intent on finding that it 
means something useful, those who are in search 
neither of a poisonous compound nor of a cathartic 
drug had better leave the disputants alone, or take 
only such notice of them as he absolutely must 
take. Allegory is the dullest game and the most 
profitless taskwork imaginable; but if so minded 
a reader might extract most elaborate meanings 
from this poem of Une Martyre; he might discover 
a likeness between the Muse of the writer and that 
strange figure of a beautiful body with the head 
severed, laid apart 

"Sur la table de nuit comme une renoncule." 

The heavy "mass of dark mane and heap of pre- 
cious jewels" might mean the glorious style and 
decorative language clothing this poetry of strange 
disease and sin; the hideous violence wrought by a 
shameless and senseless love might stand as an 
emblem of that analysis of things monstrous and 
sorrowful, which stamps the whole book with its 
special character. Then again, the divorce be- 
tween all aspiration and its results might be here 
once more given in type; the old question re- 
handled : — 



44 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

"What hand and brain went ever paired? 
What heart alike conceived and dared?" 

and the sorrowful final divorce of will from deed 
accomplished at last by force; and the whole thing 
summed up in that noble last stanza: — 

"Ton epoux court le monde; et ta forme immortelle 
Veille pres de lui quand il dort; 
Autant que toi sans doute il te sera fidele, 
Et constant j usque a, la mort." 

All this and more might be worked out if the 
reader cared to try; but we hope he would not. 
The poem is quite beautiful and valuable enough 
as merely the "design of an unknown master." 
In the same way one might use up half the poems 
in the book; for instance, those three beautiful 
studies of cats (fitly placed in a book that has al- 
together a feline style of beauty — subtle, luxurious, 
with sheathed claws) ; or such carefully tender 
sketches as Le Beau Navire; or that Latin hymn 
"Franciscae meae:" — 

"Novis te cantabo chordis, 
O novelletum quod ludis 
In solitudine cordis. 
Esto sertis implicata, 
O foemina delicata 
Per quam solvuntur peccata !" 

Some few indeed, as that ex-voto poem A une 
Madone, appeal at once to the reader as to an in- 
terpreter; they are distinctly of a mystical moral 
turn, and in that rich symbolic manner almost un- 
surpassable for beauty. 



Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mai 45 

"Avec mes Vers polis, treillis d'un pur metal 
Savamment constelle de rimes de cristal, 
Je ferai pour ta tete une enorme Couronne; 
Et dans ma Jalousie, 6 mortelle Madone, 
Je saurai te tailler un manteau, de facon 
Barbare, roide et lourd et double de soupcon, 
Qui comme une guerite enfermera tes charmes; 
Non de Perles brode, mais de toutes mes Larmes ! 
Ta Robe, ce sera mon Desir, fremissant, 
Onduleux, mon Desir qui monte et qui descend, 
Aux pointes se suspend, aux vallons se repose, 
Et revet d'un baiser tout ton corps blanc et rose." 

• Before passing on to the last poem we wish to 
indicate for especial remark, we may note a few 
others in which this singular strength of finished 
writing is most evident. Such are, for instance, 
Le Cygne, Le Poison, Tristesses de la Lune, 
Remord Posthume, JLe Flacon, del Brouille, Une 
Mendiante Rousse (a simpler study than usual, of 
great beauty in all ways, noticeable for its revival 
of the old fashion of unmixed masculine rhymes), 
Le Balcon, Allegorie, L 'Amour et le Crane, and 
the two splendid sonnets marked xxvii. and xlii. 
We cite these headings in no sort of order, merely 
as they catch one's eye in revising the list of con- 
tents and recall the poems classed there. Each of 
them we regard as worth a separate study, but the 
Litanies de Satan, as in a way the key-note to this 
whole complicated tune of poems, we had set aside 
for the last, much as (to judge by its place in the 
book) the author himself seems to have done. 

Here it seems as if all failure and sorrow on 
earth, and all the cast-out things of the world — 



46 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

ruined bodies and souls diseased — made their ap- 
peal, in default of help, to Him in whom all sorrow* 
and all failure were incarnate. As a poem, it is 
one of the noblest lyrics ever written ; the sound of 
it between wailing and triumph, as it were the blast 
blown by the trumpets of a brave army in irre- 
trievable defeat. 

"O toi qui de la Mort, ta vieille et forte amante, 

Engendras l'Esperance — une folle charmante! 

O' Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere ! 

Toi qui fais au proscrit ce regard calme et haut 

Qui damne tout un peuple autout d'un echafaud, 

O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere ! 

"Toi qui, magiquement, assouplis les vieux os 
De l'ivrogne attarde foule par les chevaux, 

O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere! 
Toi qui, pour consoler 1'homme frele qui souffre, 
Nous appris a meler le salpetre et le soufre, 

O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere !" 

These lines are not given as more finished than 
the rest; every verse has the vibration in it of 
naturally sound and pure metal. It is a study of 
metrical cadence throughout, of wonderful force 
and variety. Perhaps it may be best, without 
further attempts to praise or to explain the book, 
here to leave off, with its stately and passionate 
music fresh in our ears. We know that in time 
it must make its way; and to know when or how 
concerns us as little as it probably concerns the au- 
thor, who can very well afford to wait without 
much impatience. 



IV 
SIMEON SOLOMON 

NOTES ON HIS "VISION OF LOVE" AND OTHER STUDIES 

1871 



SIMEON SOLOMON 

NOTES ON HIS "VISION OF LOVE" AND OTHER STUDIES 

IF it may be said with perfect accuracy that in 
all plastic art, whether the language chosen 
be of words or forms, of sounds or colours, 
beauty is the only truth, and nothing not 
beautiful is true; yet this axiom of a great living 
artist and critic must not be so construed as to im- 
ply forgetfulness of the manifold and multiform 
nature of beauty. To one interpreter the terror 
or the pity of it, the shadow or the splendour, will 
appear as its main aspect, as that which gives him 
his fittest material for work or speech, the sub- 
stance most pliable to his spirit, the form most 
suggestive to his hand; to another its simplicity 
or its mystery, its community or its specialty of 
gifts. Each servant serves under the compulsion 
of his own charm; each spirit has its own chain. 
Upon men in whom there is, so to speak, a com- 
pound genius, an intermixture of spiritual forces, 
a confluence of separate yet conspiring influences, 
diverse in source yet congruous in result — upon 
men in whose eyes the boundary lines of the sev- 
eral conterminous arts appear less as lines of mere 
distinction than as lines of mutual alliance — the 
impression of the mystery in all beauty, and in all 
defects that fall short of it, and in all excesses 
that overbear it, is likely to have a special hold. 

49 



50 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

The subtle interfusion of art with art, of sound 
with form, of vocal words with silent colours, is as 
perceptible to the sense and as inexplicable to the 
understanding of such men as the interfusion of 
spirit with flesh is to all men in common; and in 
fact when perceived of no less significance than 
this, but rather a part and complement of the 
same truth. One of such artists, and at once rec- 
ognisable as such, is Mr. Simeon Solomon. There 
is not, for instance, more of the painter's art in the 
verse of Keats than of the musician's in Solomon's 
designs. As surely as the mystery of beauty — 
a mystery "most glad and sad" as Chaucer says 
of a woman's mouth — was done into colour of 
verse for ever unsurpassable in the odes "To a 
Nightingale" and on "Melancholy," so is the same 
secret wrought into perfect music of outline by the 
painter. The "unheard melodies," which Keats, 
with a sense beyond the senses, perceived and en- 
joyed in the forms of his Grecian urn, vibrate in 
the forms of this artist's handiwork; and all their 
lines and colours, 

"Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared, 
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone." 

Since the first years of his very early and bril- 
liant celebrity as a young artist of high imagina- 
tive power and promise, Mr. Solomon has been 
at work long enough to enable us to define at least 
certain salient and dominant points of his genius. 
It holds at once of east and west, of Greek and 
Hebrew. So much indeed does this fresh inter- 



Simeon Solomon 51 

fusion of influences give tone and shape to his 
imagination that I have heard him likened on this 
ground to Heine, as a kindred Hellenist of the 
Hebrews. Grecian form and beauty divide the 
allegiance of his spirit with Hebraic shadow and 
majesty: depths of cloud unsearchable and sum- 
mits unsurmountable of fire darken and lighten 
before the vision of a soul enamoured of soft light 
and clear water, of leaves and flowers and limbs 
more lovely than these. For no painter has more 
love of loveliness; but the fair forms of godhead 
and -manhood which in ancient art are purely and 
merely beautiful rise again under his hand with 
the likeness on them of a new thing, the shadow 
of a new sense, the hint of a new meaning; their 
eyes have seen in sleep or waking, in substance 
or reflection, some change now past or passing or 
to come; their lips have tasted a new savour in 
the wine of life, one strange and alien to the vint- 
age of old; they know of something beyond form 
and outside of speech. There is a questioning 
wonder in their faces, a fine joy and a faint sor- 
row, a trouble as of water stirred, a delight as of 
thirst appeased. Always, at feast or sacrifice, in 
chamber or in field, the air and carriage of their 
beauty has something in it of strange: hardly a 
figure but has some touch, though never so deli- 
cately slight, either of eagerness or of weariness, 
some note of expectancy or of satiety, some sem- 
blance of outlook or inlook: but prospective or in- 
trospective, an expression is there which is not 
pure Greek, a shade or tone of thought or feeling 



52 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

beyond Hellenic contemplation; whether it be 
oriental or modern in its origin, and derived from 
national or personal sources. This passionate 
sentiment of mystery seems at times to "o'erin- 
form its tenement" of line and colour, and impress 
itself even to perplexity upon the sense of the 
spectator. The various studies, all full of sub- 
tleties and beauties definable and not definable, 
to which the artist has given for commentary the 
graceful mysticism of a symbolic rhapsody in 
prose, are also full to overflowing of such senti- 
ment. Read by itself as a fragment of spiritual 
allegory, this written "Vision of Love revealed in 
Sleep" seems to want even that much coherence 
which is requisite to keep symbolic or allegoric 
art from absolute dissolution and collapse; that 
unity of outline and connection of purpose, that 
gradation of correlative parts and significance of 
corresponsive details, without which the whole 
aerial and tremulous fabric of symbolism must 
decompose into mere confusion of formless and 
fruitless chaos. Even allegory or prophecy must 
live and work by rule as well as by rapture ; trans- 
parent it need not be, but it must be translucent. 
And translucent the fluctuating twilight of this 
rhapsody does become in time, with the light be- 
hind it of the designs; though at first it seems as 
hard to distinguish one incarnation of love or sleep 
or charity from the next following as to disen- 
tangle the wings and wheels of Ezekiel's cheru- 
bim, or to discover and determine the respective 
properties and qualities of Blake's "emanations" 



Simeon Solomon 53 

and "spectres," The style is soft, fluent, genu- 
inely melodious ; it has nothing of inflation or con- 
straint. There is almost a superflux of images 
full of tender colour and subtle grace, which is 
sure to lead the writer into some danger of con- 
fusion and repetition; and in such vague and un- 
certain ground any such stumbling-blocks are 
likely to be especial rocks of offence to the feet 
of the traveller. Throughout the whole there is 
as it were a suffusion of music, a transpiration of 
light and sound, very delicately and surely sus- 
tained. There are thoughts and fragments of 
thoughts, fancies and fantastic symbols, some- 
times of rare beauty and singular force; in this 
for instance, of Night as a mother watching Sleep 
her child, there is a greater height and sweetness 
of imagination than in any but the sweetest and 
highest poetic allegories. "And she, to whom all 
was as an open scroll, wept when she looked upon 
him whose heart was as the heart of a little child." 
The depth and tenderness of this conception of 
Night, omniscient with the conscience of all things 
wrought under her shadow, world-wide of sight 
and sway, and wise with all the world's wisdom, 
weeping for love over the innocence of her first- 
born, is great and perfect enough for the noblest 
verse of a poet. The same affluence and delicacy 
of emblems interwoven with every part of the 
allegory is kept up from the first dawn of memory 
to the last transfiguration of love. There is an 
exquisite touch in the first vision of Memory 
standing by the sea-side with the shell held to her 



54 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

ear whose voice "imburied the dead cycles of the 
soul," with autumn leaves showered on head and 
breast, "and upon her raiment small flecks of foam 
had already dried;" this last emblem of the salt 
small foam-flecks, sharp and arid waifs of the un- 
quiet sea of life, light and bitter strays of barren 
thought and remembrance with the freshness 
dried out of them, is beautiful and new. Dim and 
vague as the atmosphere of such work should be, 
this vision would be more significant, and not less 
suggestive of things hidden in secret places of 
spiritual reserve, if it had more body of drawing, 
more shapeliness of thought and fixity of outline. 
Not that we would seek for solidity in shadow, or 
blame the beauty of luminous clouds for confusion 
of molten outlines ; but even in cloud there is some 
law of form, some continuous harmony of line and 
mass, that only dissolves and changes "as a tune 
into a tune." To invigorate and support this fair 
frame of allegory there should be some clearer in- 
fusion of a purpose; there should be some thread 
of clearer connection, some filament, though never 
so slender, to link vision again to vision, some clue, 
"as subtle as Arachne's broken woof," to lead the 
reader's perception through the labyrinth of 
sounds and shapes. Each new revelation and 
change of aspect has beauty and meaning of its 
own; but even in a dream the steps of progress 
seem clearer than here, and the process from stage 
to stage of action or passion is ruled after some 
lawless law and irrational reason of its own. 
Such process as this at least we might hope to find 



Simeon Solomon 55 

even in the records of allegoric vision ; in this mys- 
tery or tragedy of the passion of a divine sufferer 
"wounded in the house of his friends" and bleed- 
ing from the hands of men, those who follow the 
track of his pilgrimage might desire at least to 
be shown the stations of his cross. We miss the 
thread of union between the varying visions of 
love forsaken and shamed, wounded and for- 
gotten; of guileless and soulless pleasure in its 
naked and melodious maidenhood, and passion 
that makes havoc of love, and after that even of 
itself also; of death and silence, and of sleep and 
time. Many of these have in them the sweetness 
and depth of good dreams, and much subtle and 
various beauty; and had we but some clue to the 
gradations of its course, we might thread our way 
through the Daedalian maze with a free sense of 
gratitude to the artificer whose cunning reared it 
to hide no monstrous thing, but one of divine like- 
ness. It might have been well to issue with the 
text some further reproductions of the designs: 
those especially of the wounded Love from whose 
heart's blood the roses break into blossom, of Desire 
with body and raiment dishevelled and deformed 
from self-inflicted strokes, of Divine Charity bear- 
ing Sleep down to the dark earth among men that 
suffer, of Love upborne by the strong arms and 
wings of Time, of the spirit that watches in the 
depth of its crystal sphere the mutable reflections 
of the world and the revolutions of its hidden 
things; all designs full of mystical attraction and 
passion, of bitter sweetness and burning beauty. 



56 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Outside the immediate cycle of this legend of 
love divine and human, the artist has done much 
other work of a cognate kind; his sketches and 
studies in this line have always the charm of a 
visible enjoyment in the vigorous indulgence of 
a natural taste and power. One of these, a noble 
study of "Sleepers and One that Watches," has 
been translated into verse of kindred strength and 
delicacy, in three fine sonnets of high rank among 
the clear-cut and exquisite "Intaglios" of Mr. 
John Payne. But the artist is not a mere cloud- 
compeller, a dreamer on the wing who cannot use 
his feet for good travelling purpose on hard 
ground; witness the admirable picture of Roman 
ladies at a show of gladiators, exhibited in 1865, 
which remains still his masterpiece of large 
dramatic realism and live imagination. All the 
heads are full of personal force and character, 
especially the woman's with heavy brilliant hair 
and glittering white skin, like hard smooth snow 
against the sunlight, the delicious thirst and subtle 
raving of sensual hunger for blood visibly en- 
kindled in every line of the sweet fierce features. 
Mr. Solomon apparently has sufficient sense of 
physiology to share the theory which M. Alphonse 
Karr long since proposed to develope at length in 
a systematic treatise "sur la ferocite des blondes." 
The whole spirit of this noble picture is imbued 
with the proper tragic beauty and truth and terror. 

As the Hebrew love of dim vast atmosphere and 
infinite spiritual range without foothold on earth 
or resting-place in nature is perceptible in the 



Simeon Solomon 57 

mystic and symbolic cast of so many sketches and 
studies, so is a certain loving interest in the old 
sacred forms, in the very body of historic tradi- 
tion, made manifest in various more literal designs 
of actual religious offices. One series of such 
represents on a small scale, with singular force 
and refinement, the several ceremonies of the 
sacred seasons and festivals of the Jewish year. 
Other instances of this ceremonial bias towards 
religious forms of splendour or solemnity are fre- 
quent in the list of the painter's works; gorgeous 
Studies of eastern priests in church or synagogue, 
of young saint and rabbi and Greek bishop do- 
ing their divine service in "full-blown dignity" of 
official magic. I remember faces among them 
admirable for holy heaviness of feature and som- 
bre stolidity of sanctitude. No Venetian ever 
took truer delight in glorious vestures, in majestic 
embroideries, in the sharp deep sheen and glowing 
refraction of golden vessels; none of them ever 
lusted more hotly after the solid splendours of 
metal and marble, the grave glories of purple rai- 
ment and gleaming cup or censer. This same 
magnificence gives tone and colour to his classic 
subjects which explains their kinship to designs 
apparently so diverse in aim. Modern rather 
than classical, as we have noticed, in sentiment and 
significance, they combine the fervent violence of 
feeling or faith which is peculiar to the Hebrews 
with the sensitive acuteness of desire, the sublime 
reserve and balance of passion, which is peculiar 
to the Greeks. Something of Ezekiel is here 



58 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

mixed with something of Anacreon; here the 
Anthology and the Apocalypse have each set a 
distinct mark: the author of the Canticles and the 
author of the Atys have agreed for a while to work 
together. The grievous and glorious result of 
aspiration and enjoyment is here legible; the sad- 
ness that is latent in gladness; the pleasure that 
is palpable in pain. Fixed eyes and fervent lips 
are full of divine disquiet and instinctive resigna- 
tion. All the sorrow of the senses is incarnate in 
the mournful and melodious beauty of those faces ; 
they have learnt to abstain from wishing; they are 
learning to abstain from hope. Especially in such 
works as the "Sappho" and the "Antinous" of 
some years since does this unconscious underlying 
sense assert itself. The wasted and weary beauty 
of the one, the faultless and fruitful beauty of the 
other, bear alike the stamp of sorrow; of perplex- 
ities unsolved and desires unsatisfied. They are 
not the divine faces familiar to us: the lean and 
dusky features of this Sappho are unlike those of 
her traditional bust, so clear, firm, and pure; this 
Antinous is rather like Ampelus than Bacchus. 
But the heart and soul of these pictures none can 
fail to recognise as right; and the decoration is in 
all its details noble and significant. The clinging 
arms and labouring lips of Sappho, her fiery pal- 
lor and swooning eyes, the bitter and sterile 
savour of subsiding passion which seems to sharpen 
the mouth and draw down the eyelids, translate 
as far as colour can translate her. The face and 
figure beside her are soulless and passive, the 



Simeon Solomon 59 

beauty inert as a flower's; the violent spirit that 
aspires, the satisfied body that takes rest, are here 
seen as it were in types; the division of pure soul 
and of mere flesh; the powerful thing that lives 
without peace, and the peaceful thing that vege- 
tates without power. In the "Sacrifice of An- 
tinous," he officiates before the god under the 
divine disguise of Bacchus himself; the curled and 
ample hair, the pure splendour of faultless cheek 
and neck, the leopard-skin and thyrsus, are all of 
the god, and god-like; the mournful wonderful 
lips and eyes are coloured with mortal blood and 
lighted with human vision. In these pictures some 
obscure suppressed tragedy of thought and pas- 
sion and fate seems latent as the vital veins under 
a clear skin. Intentionally or not as it may be, 
some utter sorrow of soul, some world-old hope- 
lessness of heart, mixed with the strong sweet 
sense of power and beauty, has here been cast 
afresh into types. Elsewhere again, as in an 
earlier drawing which my remembrance makes 
much of, this dim tragic undertone is absent. 
The two ministering maidens in the Temple of 
Venus are priestesses of no sad god, preachers of 
no sad thing. They have not seen beyond the 
day's beauty, nor desired a delight beyond the 
hour's capacity to give. As the Epithalamium of 
Catullus to his Atys, so is this bright and sweet 
drawing to the Sappho. Here all is clear red and 
pale white, the serene and joyful colours of pure 
marble and shed rose-leaves: there dim green and 
shadows of dusky grey surround and sadden the 



60 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

splendour of fair faces and bright limbs. This 
artist affects soft backgrounds of pale southern 
foliage and the sudden slim shoots of a light 
southern spring; these often give the keynote to 
his designs, always adding to them a general grace 
of shape and gravity of tone as unmistakable as 
any other special quality of work. But here 
nothing is deeper or darker than the fallen petals 
which spot the fair pavement of the temple. One 
girl, white-robed and radiant as white water-flow- 
ers, has half let fall the rose that droops in her 
hand, dropping leaf by leaf like tears; both have 
the languor and the fruitful air of flowers in a 
sultry place; their leaning limbs and fervent faces 
are full of the goddess; their lips and eyes allure 
and await the invisible attendant Loves. The 
clear pearl-white cheeks and tender mouths have 
still about them the subtle purity of sleep; the 
whole drawing has upon it the heavy incumbent 
light of summer but half awake. Nothing of 
more simple and brilliant beauty has been done 
of late years. Here the spirit of joy is pure and 
whole; but a spirit more common is that which 
foresees without eyes and forehears without ears 
the far-off features and the soundless feet of 
change; such a spirit as dictated the choice of sub- 
ject in a picture of two young lovers in fresh full- 
ness of first love crossed and troubled visibly by 
the mere shadow and the mere breath of doubt, 
the dream of inevitable change to come which dims 
the longing eyes of the girl with a ghostly fore- 
knowledge that this too shall pass away, as with 



Simeon Solomon 61 

arms half clinging and half repellent she seems at 
once to hold off and to hold fast the lover whose 
bright youth for the moment is smiling back in 
the face of hers — a face full of the soft fear and 
secret certitude of future things which I have tried 
elsewhere to render in the verses called "Erotion" 
written as a comment on this picture, with design 
to express the subtle passionate sense of mortality 
in love itself which wells up from "the middle 
spring of pleasure," yet cannot quite kill the day's 
delight or eat away with the bitter poison of doubt 
the burning faith and self-abandoned fondness of 
the hour; since at least, though the future be for 
others, and the love now here turn elsewhere to 
seek pasture in fresh fields from other flowers, 
the vows and kisses of these his present lips are 
not theirs but hers, as the memory of his love and 
the shadow of his youth shall be hers for ever. 

In such designs the sorrow is simple as the 
beauty, the spirit simple as the form; in others 
there is all the luxury and mystery of southern 
passion and eastern dream. Many of these, as 
the figure bearing the eucharist of love, have a 
supersexual beauty, in which the lineaments of 
woman and of man seem blended as the lines of 
sky and landscape melt in burning mist of heat 
and light. Others, as the Bacchus, have about 
them a fleshly glory of godhead and bodily deity, 
which holds at once of earth and heaven; neither 
the mystic and conquering Indian is this god, nor 
the fierce choregus of Cithaeron. The artist's 
passionate love of gorgeous mysteries, "prodig- 



62 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

ious mixtures and confusions strange" of sense 
and spirit no less than "of good and ill," has given 
him the will and the power to spiritualise at his 
pleasure, by the height and splendour of his treat- 
ment, the somewhat unspiritual memory of Helio- 
gabalus, "Emperor of Rome and High Priest of 
the Sun," symbolic in that strange union of offices 
at once of east and west, of ghostly glory and vis- 
ible lordship, of the lusts of the flesh and the 
secrets of the soul, of the kingdom of this world 
and the mystery of another: the superb and lux- 
urious power and subtlety of the study take in 
both aspects of his figure, the strangest surely 
that ever for an instant overtopped the world. 

There is an entire class of Mr. Solomon's de- 
signs in which the living principle and moving 
spirit is music made visible. His groups of girls 
and youths that listen to one singing or reciting 
seem utterly imbued with the spirit of sound, 
clothed with music as with a garment, kindled and 
swayed by it as fire or as foliage by a wakening 
wind. In pictures where no one figures as making 
music, the same fine inevitable sense of song makes 
melodies of vocal colour and symphonies of 
painted cadence. The beautiful oil painting of 
bride, bridegroom, and paranymph has in its deep 
ripe tones the same suffusion of sound as that of 
the evening hymn to the hours; the colours have 
speech in them, a noble and solemn speech, and 
full of large strong harmonies. In the visible 
"mystery of faith" we feel the same mighty meas- 
ures of a silent song go up with the elevation of 



Simeon Solomon 63 

the host; and from the soundless lips of Love and 
Sleep, of Memory and of Dreams, of Pleasure 
and Lust and Death, the voice of their manifold 
mystery is audible. 

In almost all of these there is perceptible the 
same profound suggestion of unity between oppo- 
sites, the same recognition of the identity of con- 
traries. Even in the gatherings of children about 
the knees of Love, as he tells his first tales to elder 
and younger lads and girls, there are touches of 
trouble and distraction, of faint doubt and form- 
less pain on the fresh earnest faces that attend in 
wonder and in trance. Even in the glad soft 
grouping of boys and maidens by "summer twi- 
light," under light bloom of branches that play 
against a gracious gleaming sky, their clear 
smiles and swift chance gestures recall some 
thought of the shadow as well as the light of life; 
and always there seems to rise up before the spirit, 
at thought of the might and ravage of time and 
"sad mortality," the eternal question — 

"How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, 
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?" 

But far other questions than this rise up behind 
it, as we gaze into the great and terrible mystery 
of beauty, and turn over in thought the gloss of 
far other commentators, the scrolls of strange in- 
terpreters, materialist and mystic. In the features 
of these groups and figures which move and make 
music before us in the dumb show of lines and 
colours, we see the latent relations of pain and 



64 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

pleasure, the subtle conspiracies of good with evil, 
the deep alliances of death and life, of love and 
hate, of attraction and abhorrence. Whether suf- 
fering or enjoyment be the master expression of 
a face, and whether that enjoyment or that suf- 
fering be merely or mainly spiritual or sensual, 
it is often hard to say — hard often to make sure 
whether the look of loveliest features be the look 
of a cruel or a pitiful soul. Sometimes the sen- 
sible vibration as of living lips and eyes lets out 
the secret spirit, and we see the springs of its in- 
ner and confluent emotions. The subtleties and 
harmonies of suggestion in such studies of complex 
or it may be perverse nature would have drawn 
forth praise and sympathy from Baudelaire, most 
loving of all students of strange beauty and 
abnormal refinement, of painful pleasures of soul 
and inverted raptures of sense. There is a mix- 
ture of utmost delicacy with a fine cruelty in some 
of these faces of fair feminine youth which recalls 
the explanation of a philosopher of the material 
school, whose doctrine is at least not without his- 
toric example and evidence to support it: "Une 
infinite de sots, dupes de cette incroyable sensi- 
bilite qu'ils voient dans les femmes, ne se doutent 
pas que les extremites se rapprochent, et que c'est 
precisement au foyer de ce sentiment que la cru- 
aute prend sa source. Parce que la cruaute 
n'est elle-meme qu'une des branches de la sensi- 
bilite, et que c'est tou jours en raison du degre dont 
nos ames en sont penetrees que les grandes hor- 
reurs se commettent." The matter of this passage 



Simeon Solomon 65 

is better than the style; by the presence of this 
element we may distinguish cruelty from brutal- 
ity, a Nero from a Gallifet, a Brinvilliers from 
a "baby-farmer." In several of Mr. Solomon's 
designs we find heads emblematic of active or vi- 
sionary passion upon which the seal of this sensitive 
cruelty is set; made beautiful beyond the beauty 
of serpent or of tiger by the sensible infusion of 
a soul which refines to a more delicate delight the 
mere nervous lust after blood, the mere physical 
appetite and ravenous relish for fleshly torture; 
which finds out the very "spirit of sense" and fine 
root of utmost feeling alike in the patient and the 
agent of the pain. There are no bestial faces, no 
mere vile types of brutality, but only of this cun- 
ning and cruel sensibility which catches fire from 
the stroke it deals, and drinks as its wine of life 
the blood of its sentient sacrifice. The poignancy 
of this pleasure is patent and fervent in the face 
of the fair woman overlooking the fresh full agony 
in the circus ; the aftertaste of fierce weariness and 
bitter languor that corrodes the soul is perceptible 
in the aspect of the figure representing Lust, with 
haunted eyes and savage haggard lips and barren 
body scored with blood, in the allegoric design of 
Love. Other faces again are live emblems of an 
infinite tenderness, of sad illimitable pity, of the 
sweetness of utter faith and ardour that consumes 
all the meaner elements of life; the fiery passion 
and hunger after God of St. Theresa, who might 
be taken as patroness of the Christian side of this 
painter's art: one whole class of his religious de- 



66 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

signs is impregnated with the burning mysticism 
and raging rapture of her visions, reflected as we 
feel them in Crashaw's hymn of invocation from 
the furnace of her own fierce words and phrases 
of prostrate ardour and amorous appeal to her 
Bridegroom. 

All great and exquisite colourists have a mys- 
tery of their own, the conscience of a power known 
to themselves only as the heart knows its own 
bitterness, and not more communicable or expli- 
cable. In this case th@ pictorial power is so mixed 
with personal quality, so informed and infused 
with a subtle energy of sentiment, that a student 
from without may perhaps be able to note, not 
quite inaccurately or unprofitably, the main spir- 
itual elements of the painter's work. In the 
work of some artists the sentiment is either a blank 
or a mist; and none but technical criticism of such 
work can be other than incompetent and injuri- 
ous. The art of Mr. Solomon is of a kind which 
has inevitable attraction for artists of another sort, 
and is all the more liable to suffer from the ver- 
dicts of unskilled and untrained judgments. But 
an artist of his rank and quality has no need to 
cry out against the rash intrusion of critical strag- 
glers from the demesne of any other art. He can 
afford the risk of such sympathies, for his own is 
rich in the qualities of those others also, in musi- 
cal and poetic excellence not less positive than the 
pictorial; and as artist he stands high enough to 
be above all chance of the imputation cast on some 
that they seek comfort in the ignorant admiration 



Simeon Solomon 67 

and reciprocal sympathy of men who cultivate 
some alien line of art, for conscious incompetence 
and failure in their own; fain to find shelter for 
bad painting under the plea of poetic feeling, or 
excuse for bad verse under the plea of good 
thought or sentiment. By right of his innate 
energies and actual performances, he claims kin- 
ship and alliance with the foremost in all fields of 
art, while holding in his own a special and memor- 
able place. Withdrawn from the roll of artists, 
his name would leave a void impossible to fill up 
by any worthiest or ablest substitute; by any name 
of master in the past or disciple in the present or 
future. The one high test requisite for all gen- 
uine and durable honour is beyond all question 
his; he is himself alone, and one Whose place no 
man can take. They only, but they assuredly, of 
whom this can be said, may trust in their life to 
come. Time wears out the names of the best imi- 
tators and followers; but he whose place is his 
own, and that place high among his fellows, may 
be content to leave his life's work with all confi- 
dence to time. 



MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S "MODERN 

LOVE" 

1862 



MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S "MODERN 

LOVE" 

(Letter to the Editor of the Spectator.) 

SIR, — I cannot resist asking the favour of 
admission for my protest against the 
article on Mr. Meredith's last volume of 
poems in the Spectator of May 24th. 1 
That I personally have for the writings, whether 
verse or prose, of Mr. Meredith a most sincere 
and deep admiration is no doubt a matter of in- 
finitely small moment. I wish only, in default of 
a better, to appeal seriously on general grounds 
against this sort of criticism as applied to one 
of the leaders of English literature. To any 
fair attack Mr. Meredith's books of course He 
as much open as another man's; indeed, standing 
where he does, the very eminence of his post makes 
him perhaps more liable than a man of less well- 
earned fame to the periodical slings and arrows of 
publicity. Against such criticism no one would 
have a right to appeal, whether for his own work 
or for another's. But the writer of the article in 
question blinks at starting the fact that he is deal- 
ing with no unfledged pretender. Any work of 
a man who has won his spurs, and fought his way 
to a foremost place among the men of his time, 
must claim at least a grave consideration and re- 

1 1862.— Ed. 

71 



72 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

spect. It would hardly be less absurd, in remark- 
ing on a poem by Mr. Meredith, to omit all refer- 
ence to his previous work, and treat the present 
book as if its author had never tried his hand at 
such writing before, than to criticise the Legende 
des Siecles, or (coming to a nearer instance) the 
Idylls of the King, without taking into account 
the relative position of the great English or the 
greater French poet. On such a tone of criticism 
as this any one may chance to see or hear of it has 
a right to comment. 

But even if the case were different, and the 
author were now at his starting-point, such a re- 
view of such a book is surely out of date. Praise 
or blame should be thoughtful, serious, careful, 
when applied to a Work of such subtle strength, 
such depth of delicate power, such passionate and 
various beauty, as the leading poem of Mr. Mere- 
dith's volume: in some points, as it seems to me 
(and in this opinion I know that I have weightier 
judgments than my own to back me) a poem 
above the aim and beyond the reach of any but 
its author. Mr. Meredith is one of the three or 
four poets now alive whose work, perfect or im- 
perfect, is always as noble in design as it is often 
faultless in result. The present critic falls foul 
of him for dealing with "a deep and painful sub- 
ject on which he has no conviction to express." 
There are pulpits enough for all preachers in 
prose; the business of verse-writing is hardly to 
express convictions ; and if some poetry, not with- 
out merit of its kind, has at times dealt in dog- 



George Meredith's "Modem Love" 78 

matic morality, it is all the worse and all the 
weaker for that. As to subject, it is too much 
to expect that all schools of poetry are to be for 
ever subordinate to the one just now so much in 
request with us, whose scope of sight is bounded 
by the nursery walls; that all Muses are to bow 
down before her who babbles, with lips yet warm 
from their pristine pap, after the dangling de- 
lights of a child's coral; and jingles with flaccid 
fingers one knows not whether a jester's or a 
baby's bells. We have not too many writers 
capable of duly handling a subject worth the seri- 
ous interest of men. As to execution, take almost 
any sonnet at random out of the series, and let any 
man qualified to judge for himself of metre, choice 
of expression, and splendid language, decide on 
its claims. And, after all, the test will be unfair, 
except as regards metrical or pictorial merit; 
every section of this great progressive poem being 
connected with the other by links of the finest and 
most studied workmanship. Take, for example, 
that noble sonnet, beginning 

"We saw the swallows gathering in the skies," 

a more perfect piece of writing no man alive has 
ever turned out; witness these three lines, the 
grandest perhaps of the book: 

"And in the largeness of the evening earth, 
Our spirit grew as we walked side by side ; 
The hour became her husband, and my bride j" 

but in transcription it must lose the colour and 



74 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

effect given it by its place in the series; the grave 
and tender beauty, which makes it at once a bridge 
and a resting-place between the admirable poems 
of passion it falls among. As specimens of pure 
power, and depth of imagination at once intricate 
and vigorous, take the two sonnets on a false 
passing reunion of wife and husband; the sonnet 
on the rose; that other beginning: 

"I am not of those miserable males 
Who sniff at vice, and daring not to snap, 
Do therefore hope for heaven." 

And, again, that earlier one: 

"All other joys of life he strove to warm." 

Of the shorter poems which give character to 
the book I have not space to speak here; and as 
the critic has omitted noticing the most valuable 
and important (such as the "Beggar's Soliloquy," 
and the "Old Chartist," equal to Beranger for 
completeness of effect and exquisite justice of 
style, but noticeable for a thorough dramatic in- 
sight, which Beranger missed through his personal 
passions and partialities), there is no present need 
to go into the matter. I ask you to admit this 
protest simply out of justice to the book in hand, 
believing as I do that it expresses the deliberate 
unbiassed opinion of a sufficient number of readers 
to warrant the insertion of it, and leaving to your 
consideration rather their claims to a fair hearing 
than those of the book's author to a revised judg- 



George Meredith's "Modern Love" 75 

ment. A poet of Mr. Meredith's rank can no 
more be profited by the advocacy of his admirers 
than injured by the rash or partial attack of his 
critics. 

A. C. Swinburne. 



VI 
CHARLES DICKENS 

1902 



CHARLES DICKENS 

IT is only when such names as Shakespeare's 
or Hugo's rise and remain as the supreme 
witnesses of what was highest in any particu- 
lar country at any particular time that there 
can be any question among any but irrational and 
impudent men as to the supremacy of their great- 
est. England, under the reign of Dickens, had 
other great names to boast of which may well be 
allowed to challenge the sovereignty of his genius. 
But as there certainly was no Shakespeare and no 
Hugo to rival and eclipse his glory, he will prob- 
ably and naturally always be accepted and ac- 
claimed as the greatest Englishman of his gener- 
ation. His first works or attempts at work gave 
little more promise of such a future than if he had 
been a Coleridge or a Shelley. No one could 
have foreseen what all may now foresee in the 
"Sketches by Boz" — not only a quick and keen- 
eyed observer, "a chiel amang us takin' notes" more 
notable than Captain Grose's, but a great creative 
genius. Nor could anyone have foreseen it in the 
early chapters of "Pickwick" — which, at their best, 
do better the sort of thing which had been done 
fairly well before. Sam Weller and Charles 
Dickens came to life together, immortal and twin- 
born. In "Oliver Twist" the quality of a great 
comic and tragic poet or dramatist in prose fiction 

79 



80 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

was for the first time combined with the already 
famous qualities of a great humourist and a born 
master in the arts of narrative and dialogue. 

Like the early works of all other great writers 
whose critical contemporaries have failed to elude 
the kindly chance of beneficent oblivion, the early 
works of Dickens have been made use of to depre- 
ciate his later, with the same enlightened and im- 
partial candour which on the appearance of 
"Othello" must doubtless have deplored the steady 
though gradual decline of its author's genius from 
the unfulfilled promise of excellence held forth by 
"Two Gentlemen of Verona." There may pos- 
sibly be some faint and flickering shadow of excuse 
for the dullards, if unmalignant, who prefer 
"Nicholas Nickleby" to the riper and sounder 
fruits of the same splendid and inexhaustible 
genius. Admirable as it is, full of life and sap 
and savour, the strength and the weakness of youth 
are so singularly mingled in the story and the 
style that readers who knew nothing of its date 
might naturally have assumed that it must have 
been the writer's first attempt at fiction. There 
is perhaps no question which would more thor- 
oughly test the scholarship of the student than 
this: — What do you know of Jane Dibabs and 
Horatio Peltiogrus? At fourscore and ten it 
might be thought "too late a week" for a reader 
to revel with insuppressible delight in a first read- 
ing of the chapters which enrol all worthy readers 
in the company of Mr. Vincent Crummies; but I 
can bear witness to the fact that this effect was 



Charles Dickens 81 

produced on a reader of that age who had earned 
honour and respect in public life, affection and 
veneration in private. It is not, on the other hand, 
less curious and significant that Sydney Smith, 
who had held out against Sam Weller, should have 
been conquered by Miss Squeers; that her letter, 
which of all Dickens's really good things is per- 
haps the most obviously imitative and suggestive 
of its model, should have converted so great an 
elder humourist to appreciation of a greater than 
himself ; that the echo of familiar fun, an echo from 
tlie grave of Smollett, should have done what finer 
and more original strokes of comic genius had un- 
accountably failed to do. But in all criticism of 
such work the merely personal element of the 
critic, the natural atmosphere in which his mind 
or his insight works, and uses its faculties of ap- 
preciation, is really the first and last thing to be 
taken into account. 

No mortal man or woman, no human boy or girl, 
can resist the fascination of Mr. and Mrs. Quilp, 
of Mr. and Miss Brass, of Mr. Swiveller and his 
Marchioness; but even the charm of Mrs. Jarley 
and her surroundings, the magic which enthrals 
us in the presence of a Codlin and a Short, cannot 
mesmerise or hypnotise us into belief that the story 
of "The Old Curiosity Shop" is in any way a good 
story. But it is the first book in which the back- 
ground or setting is often as impressive as the 
figures which can hardly be detached from it in 
our remembered impression of the whole design. 
From Quilp's Wharf to Plashwater Weir Mill 



■v 



82 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Lock, the river belongs to Dickens by right of 
conquest or creation. The part it plays in more 
than a few of his books is indivisible from the parts 
played in them by human actors beside it or upon 
it. Of such actors in this book, the most famous 
as an example of her creator's power as a master 
of pathetic tragedy would thoroughly deserve her 
fame if she were but a thought more human and 
more credible. "The child" has never a touch of 
childhood about her; she is an impeccable and in- 
variable portent of devotion, without a moment's 
lapse into the humanity of frailty in temper or in 
conduct. Dickens might as well have fitted her 
with a pair of wings at once. A woman might 
possibly be as patient, as resourceful, as indefati- 
gable in well-doing and as faultless in perception 
of the right thing to do; it would be difficult to 
make her deeply interesting, but she might be 
made more or less of an actual creature. But a 
child whom nothing can ever irritate, whom 
nothing can ever baffle, whom nothing can ever 
misguide, whom nothing can ever delude, and 
whom nothing can ever dismay, is a monster as 
inhuman as a baby with two heads. 

Outside the class which excludes all but the 
highest masterpieces of poetry it is difficult to find 
or to imagine a faultless work of creation — in other 
words, a faultless work of fiction; but the story of 
"Barnaby Rudge" can hardly, in common justice, 
be said to fall short of this crowning praise. And 
in this book, even if not in any of its precursors, 
an appreciative reader must recognise a quality 



Charles Dickens 83 

of humour which will remind him of Shakespeare, 
and perhaps of Aristophanes. The impetuous and 
irrepressible volubility of Miss Miggs, when once 
her eloquence breaks loose and finds vent like rag- 
ing water or fire, is powerful enough to overbear 
for the moment any slight objection which a 
severe morality might suggest with respect to the 
rectitude and propriety of her conduct. It is im- 
possible to be rigid in our judgment of "a toiling, 
moiling, constant-working, always-being-found- 
fault-with, never-giving-satisfactions, nor-having- 
no-time-to-clean-oneself, potter's wessel," whose 
"only becoming occupation is to help young flaunt- 
ing pagins to brush and comb and titiwate their- 
selves into whitening and suppulchres, and leave 
the young men to think that there an't a 
bit of padding in it nor no pinching-ins, nor fill- 
ings-out nor pomatums nor deceits nor earthly 
wanities." To have made malignity as delightful 
for an instant as simplicity, and Miss Miggs as 
enchanting as Mrs. Quickly or Mrs. Gamp, is an 
unsurpassable triumph of dramatic humour. 

But the advance in tragic power is even more 
notable and memorable than this. The pathos, 
indeed, is too cruel; the tortures of the idiot's 
mother and the murderer's wife are so fearful that 
interest and sympathy are wellnigh superseded or 
overbalanced by a sense of horror rather than of 
pity; magnificent as is the power of dramatic in- 
vention which animates every scene in every stage 
of her martyrdom. Dennis is the first of those 
consummate and wonderful ruffians, with two vile 



84 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

faces under one frowsy hood, whose captain or 
commander-in-chief is Rogue Riderhood; more 
fearful by far, though not (one would hope) more 
natural, than Henriet Cousin, who could hardly 
breathe when fastening the rope round Esmer- 
alda's neck, "tant la chose l'apitoyait"; a divine 
touch of surviving humanity which would have 
been impossible to the more horrible hangman 
whose mortal agony in immediate prospect of the 
imminent gallows is as terribly memorable as any- 
thing in the tragedy of fiction or the poetry of 
prose. His fellow hangbird is a figure no less 
admirable throughout all his stormy and fiery 
career till the last moment ; and then he drops into 
poetry. Nor is it poetry above the reach of Silas 
Wegg which "invokes the curse of all its victims 
on that black tree, of which he is the ripened fruit." 
The writer's impulse was noble; but its expression 
or its effusion is such as indifference may deride 
and sympathy must deplore. Twice only did the 
greatest English writer of his day make use of 
history as a background or a stage for fiction; the 
use made of it in "Barnaby Rudge" is even more 
admirable in the lifelike tragedy and the terrible 
comedy of its presentation than the use made of 
it in "A Tale of Two Cities." 

Dickens was doubtless right in his preference of 
"David Copperfield" to all his other masterpieces; 
it is only among dunces that it is held improbable 
or impossible for a great writer to judge aright of 
his own work at its best, to select and to prefer the 
finest and the fullest example of his active genius ; 



Charles Dickens 85 

but, when all deductions have been made from the 
acknowledgement due to the counter-claim of 
"Martin Chuzzlewit," the fact remains that in that 
unequal and irregular masterpiece his comic and 
his tragic genius rose now and then to the very- 
highest pitch of all. No son of Adam and no 
daughter of Eve on this God's earth, as his occa- 
sional friend Mr. Carlyle might have expressed it, 
could have imagined it possible — for anything in 
later comedy to rival the unspeakable perfection 
of Mrs. Quickly's eloquence at its best; at such 
moments as when her claim to be acknowledged as 
Lady Falstaff was reinforced, if not by the spirit- 
ual authority of Master Dumb, by the correlative 
evidence of Mrs. Keech; but no reader above the 
level of intelligence which prefers to Shakespeare 
the Parisian Ibsen and the Norwegian Sardou can 
dispute the fact that Mrs. Gamp has once and 
again risen even to that unimaginable supremacy 
of triumph. 

At the first interview vouchsafed to us with the 
adorable Sairey, we feel that no words can express 
our sense of the divinely altruistic and devoted 
nature which finds utterance in the sweetly and 
sublimely simple words — "If I could afford to lay 
all my feller creeturs out for nothink, I would 
gladly do it: sich is the love I bear 'em." We 
think of little Tommy Harris, and the little red 
worsted shoe gurgling in his throat; of the previ- 
ous occasion when his father sought shelter and 
silence in an empty dog-kennel; of that father's 
immortally infamous reflection on the advent of 



86 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

his ninth; of religious feelings, of life, and the end 
of all things; of Mr. Gamp, his wooden leg, and 
their precious boy; of her calculations and her ex- 
periences with reference to birth and death; of 
her views as to the expediency of travel by steam, 
which anticipated Ruskin's and those of later dis- 
senters from the gospel of hurry and the religion 
of mechanism; of the contents of Mrs. Harris's 
pocket; of the incredible incredulity of the infidel 
Mrs. Prig; we think of all this, and of more than 
all this, and acknowledge with infinite thanksgiv- 
ing of inexhaustible laughter and of rapturous 
admiration the very greatest comic poet or creator 
that ever lived to make the life of other men more 
bright and more glad and more perfect than ever, 
without his beneficent influence, it possibly or 
imaginably could have been. 

The advance in power of tragic invention, the 
increased strength in grasp of character and grip 
of situation, which distinguishes Chuzzlewit from 
Nickleby, may be tested by comparison of the 
leading villains. Ralph Nickleby might almost 
have walked straight off the boards on which the 
dramatic genius of his nephew was employed to 
bring into action two tubs and a pump: Jonas 
Chuzzlewit has his place of eminence for ever 
among the most memorable types of living and 
breathing wickedness that ever were stamped and 
branded with immortality by the indignant genius 
of a great and unrelenting master. Neither 
Vautrin nor Thenardiei has more of evil and of 
deathless life in him. 



Charles Dickens 87 

It is not only by his masterpieces, it is also by 
his inferior works or even by his comparative fail- 
ures that the greatness of a great writer may be 
reasonably judged and tested. We can measure 
in some degree the genius of Thackeray by the 
fact that "Pendennis," with all its marvellous 
wealth of character and humour and living truth, 
has never been and never will be rated among 
his very greatest works. "Dombey and Son" 
cannot be held nearly so much of a success as 
"Pendennis." I have known a man of the very 
highest genius and the most fervent enthusiasm 
for that of Dickens who never could get through 
it. There is nothing of a story, and all that 
nothing (to borrow a phrase from Martial) is bad. 
The Roman starveling had nothing to lose, and 
lost it all: the story of Dombey has no plot, and 
that a very stupid one. The struttingly offensive 
father and his gushingly submissive daughter are 
failures of the first magnitude. Little Paul is a 
more credible child than Little Nell; he sometimes 
forgets that he is foredoomed by a more than 
Pauline or Calvinistic law of predestination to 
die in the odour of sentiment, and says or thinks 
or does something really and quaintly childlike. 
But we get, to say the least, a good deal of him; 
and how much too little do we get of Jack Bunsby ! 
Not so very much more than of old Bill Barley; 
and yet those two ancient mariners are berthed 
for ever in the inmost shrine of our affections. 
Another patch of the very brightest purple sewn 
into the sometimes rather threadbare stuff or 



88 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

groundwork of the story is the scene in which the 
dissolution of a ruined household is so tragicomi- 
cally set before us in the breaking up of the 
servants' hall. And when we think upon the 
cherished names of Toots and Nipper, Gills and 
Cuttle, Rob the Grinder and good Mrs. Brown, 
we are tempted to throw conscience to the winds, 
and affirm that the book is a good book. 

But even if we admit that here was an interlude 
of comparative failure, we cannot but feel moved 
to acclaim with all the more ardent gratitude the 
appearance of the next and perhaps the greatest 
gift bestowed upon us by this magnificent and 
immortal benefactor. "David Copperfield," from 
the first chapter to the last, is unmistakable by any 
eye above the level and beyond the insight of a 
beetle's as one of the masterpieces to which time 
can only add a new charm and an unimaginable 
value. The narrative is as coherent and harmo- 
nious as that of "Tom Jones"; and to say this is 
to try it by the very highest and apparently the 
most unattainable standard. But I must venture 
to reaffirm my conviction that even the glorious 
masterpiece of Fielding's radiant and beneficent 
genius, if in some points superior, is by no means 
superior in all. Tom is a far completer and more 
living type of gallant boyhood and generous young 
manhood than David ; but even the lustre of Part- 
ridge is pallid and lunar beside the noontide glory 
of Micawber. Blifil is a more poisonously plau- 
sible villain than Uriah: Sophia Western remains 
unequalled except by her sister heroine Amelia 



Charles Dickens 89 

as a perfectly credible and adorable type of young 
English womanhood, naturally "like one of 
Shakespeare's women," socially as fine and true a 
lady as Congreve's Millamant and Angelica. But 
even so large-minded and liberal a genius as 
Fielding's could never have conceived any figure 
like Miss Trotwood's, any group like that of the 
Peggottys. As easily could it have imagined and 
realised the magnificent setting of the story, with 
its homely foreground of street or wayside and its 
background of tragic sea. 

The perfect excellence of this masterpiece has 
perhaps done some undeserved injury to the less 
impeccable works of genius which immediately suc- 
ceeded it. But in "Bleak House" the daring ex- 
periment of combination or alternation which 
divides a story between narrative in the third per- 
son and narrative in the first is justified and 
vindicated by its singular and fascinating success. 
"Esther's narrative" is as good as her creator's; 
and no enthusiasm of praise could overrate the 
excellence of them both. For wealth and variety 
of character none of the master's works can be said 
to surpass and few can be said to equal it. When 
all necessary allowance has been made for occa- 
sional unlikeliness in detail or questionable methods 
of exposition, the sustained interest and the terrible 
pathos of Lady Dedlock's tragedy will remain 
unaffected and unimpaired. Any reader can 
object that a lady visiting a slum in the disguise 
of a servant would not have kept jewelled rings 
on her fingers for the inspection of a crossing- 



90 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

sweeper, or that a less decorous and plausible way 
of acquainting her with the fact that a scandalous 
episode in her early life was no longer a secret for 
the family lawyer could hardly have been imag- 
ined than the public narrative of her story in her 
own drawing-room by way of an evening's enter- 
tainment for her husband and their guests. To 
these objections, which any Helot of culture 
whose brain may have been affected by habitual 
indulgence in the academic delirium of self-com- 
placent superiority may advance or may suggest 
with the most exquisite infinity of impertinence, it 
may be impossible to retort an equally obvious and 
inconsiderable objection. 

But to a far more serious charge, which even now 
appears to survive the confutation of all serious 
evidence, it is incomprehensible and inexplicable 
that Dickens should have returned no better an an- 
swer than he did. Harold Skimpole was said to be 
Leigh Hunt; a rascal after the order of Waine- 
wright, without the poisoner's comparatively and 
diabolically admirable audacity of frank and fiend- 
ish self-esteem, was assumed to be meant for a por- 
trait or a caricature of an honest man and a man of 
unquestionable genius. To this most serious and 
most disgraceful charge, Dickens merely replied 
that he never anticipated the identification of the 
rascal Skimpole with the fascinating Harold — the 
attribution of imaginary villainy to the original 
model who suggested or supplied a likeness for the 
externally amiable and ineffectually accomplished 
lounger and shuffler through life. The simpler and 



Charles Dickens 91 

final reply should have been that indolence was the 
essential quality of the character and conduct and 
philosophy of Skimpole — "a perfectly idle man: a 
mere amateur," as he describes himself to the sym- 
pathetic and approving Sir Leicester; that Leigh 
Hunt was one of the hardest and steadiest workers 
on record, throughout a long and chequered life, at 
the toilsome trade of letters; and therefore that to 
represent him as a heartless and shameless idler 
would have been about as rational an enterprise, as 
lifelike a design after the life, as it would have 
'been to represent Shelley as a gluttonous and cant- 
ing hypocrite or Byron as a loyal and unselfish 
friend. And no one as yet, I believe, has pre- 
tended to recognise in Mr. Jarndyce a study from 
Byron, in Mr. Chadband a libel on Shelley. 

Of the two shorter novels which would suffice to 
preserve for ever the fame of Dickens, some readers 
will as probably always prefer "Hard Times" as 
others will prefer "A Tale of Two Cities." The 
later of these is doubtless the most ingeniously and 
dramatically invented and constructed of all the 
master's works ; the earlier seems to me the greater 
in moral and pathetic and humorous effect. The 
martyr workman, beautiful as is the study of his 
character and terrible as is the record of his tragedy, 
is almost too spotless a sufferer and a saint; the 
lifelong lapidation of this unluckier Stephen is 
somewhat too consistent and insistent and persist- 
ent for any record but that of a martyrology; but 
the obdurate and histrionic affectation which ani- 
mates the brutality and stimulates the selfishness of 



92 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Mr. Bounderby is only too lamentably truer and 
nearer to the unlovely side of life. Mr. Ruskin — 
a name never to be mentioned without reverence — 
thought otherwise; but in knowledge and insight 
into character and ethics that nobly minded man 
of genius wlas no more comparable to Dickens than 
in sanity of ardour and rationality of aspiration 
for progressive and practical reform. 

As a social satirist Dickens is usually considered 
to have shown himself at his weakest; the curious 
and seemingly incorrigible ignorance which im- 
agined that the proper title of Sir John Smith's 
wife was Lady John Smith, and that the same 
noble peer could be known to his friends and para- 
sites alternately as Lord Jones and Lord James 
Jones, may naturally make us regret the absence 
from their society of our old Parisian friend Sir 
Brown, Esquire; but though such singular desig- 
nations as these were never rectified or removed 
from the text of "Nicholas Nickleby," and though 
a Lady Kew was as far outside the range of his 
genius as a Madame Marneffe, his satire of social 
pretension and pretence was by no means always 
"a swordstroke in the water" or a flourish in the 
air. Mrs. Sparsit is as typical and immortal as 
any figure of Moliere's; and the fact that Mr. 
Sparsit was a Powler is one which can never be 
forgotten. 

There is no surer way of testing the greatness 
of a really great writer than by consideration of 
his work at its weakest, and comparison of that 
comparative weakness with the strength of lesser 



Charles Dickens 93 

men at their strongest and their best. The ro- 
mantic and fanciful comedy of "Love's Labour's 
Lost" is hardly a perceptible jewel in the sover- 
eign crown of Shakespeare; but a single passage 
in a single scene of it — the last of the fourth act 
■ — is more than sufficient to outweigh, to outshine, 
to eclipse and efface forever the dramatic lucubra- 
tions and prescriptions of Dr. Ibsen — Fracastoro 
of the drama — and his volubly grateful patients. 
Among the mature works of Dickens and of 
Thackeray, I suppose most readers would agree 
in the opinion that the least satisfactory, if con- 
sidered as representative of the author's incom- 
parable powers, are "Little Dorrit" and "The Vir- 
ginians"; yet no one above the intellectual level 
of an Ibsenite or a Zolaist will doubt or will 
deny that there is enough merit in either of these 
books for the stable foundation of an enduring 
fame. 

The conception of "Little Dorrit" was far hap- 
pier and more promising than that of "Dombey 
and Son"; which indeed is not much to say for it. 
Mr. Dombey is a doll ; Mr. Dorrit is an everlasting 
figure of comedy in its most tragic aspect and 
tragedy in its most comic phase. Little Dorrit 
herself might be less untruly than unkindly de- 
scribed as Little Nell grown big, or in Milton's 
phrase, "writ large." But on that very account 
she is a more credible and therefore a more really 
and rationally pathetic figure. The incompar- 
able incoherence of the parts which pretend in 
vain to compose the incomposite story may be 



94 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

gauged by the collapse of some of them and the 
vehement hurry of cramped and halting invention 
which huddles up the close of it without an at- 
tempt at the rational and natural evolution of 
others. It is like a child's dissected map with 
some of the counties or kingdoms missing. Much, 
though certainly not all, of the humour is of the 
poorest kind possible to Dickens; and the reitera- 
ted repetition of comic catchwords and tragic illus- 
trations of character is such as to affect the nerves 
no less than the intelligence of the reader with ir- 
repressible irritation. But this, if he be wise, will 
be got over and kept under by his sense of admi- 
ration and of gratitude for the unsurpassable ex- 
cellence of the finest passages and chapters. The 
day after the death of Mr. Merdle is one of the 
most memorable dates in all the record of creative 
history — or, to use one word in place of two, in 
all the record of fiction. The fusion of humour 
and horror in the marvellous chapter which de- 
scribes it is comparable only with the kindred 
work of such creators as the authors of "Les 
Miserables" and "King Lear." And nothing in 
the work of Balzac is newer and truer and more 
terrible than the relentless yet not unmerciful evo- 
lution of the central figure in the story. The Fa- 
ther of the Marshalsea is so pitiably worthy of pity 
as well as of scorn that it would have seemed im- 
possible to heighten or to deepen the contempt or 
the compassion of the reader; but when he falls 
from adversity to prosperity he succeeds in soaring 
down and sinking up to a more tragicomic igno- 



Charles Dickens 95 

miny of more aspiring degradation. And his end 
is magnificent. 

It must always be interesting as well as curi- 
ous to observe the natural attitude of mind, the 
inborn instinct of intelligent antipathy or sym- 
pathy, discernible or conjecturable in the greatest 
writer of any nation at any particular date, with 
regard to the characteristic merits or demerits of 
foreigners. Dickens was once most unjustly taxed 
with injustice to the French, by an evidently loyal 
and cordial French critic, on the ground that the 
one Frenchman of any mark in all his books was 
a murderer. The polypseudonomous ruffian 
who uses and wears out as many stolen names as 
ever did even the most cowardly and virulent of 
literary poisoners is doubtless an unlovely figure: 
but not even Mr. Peggotty and his infant niece are 
painted with more tender and fervent sympathy 
than the good Corporal and little Bebelle. Hugo 
could not — even omnipotence has its limits — have 
given a more perfect and living picture of a hero 
and a child. I wish I could think he would have 
given it as the picture of an English hero and an 
English child. But I do think that Italian readers 
of "Little Dorrit" ought to appreciate and to en- 
joy the delightful and admirable personality of 
Cavalletto. Mr. Baptist in Bleeding Heart Yard 
is as attractively memorable a figure as his excel- 
lent friend Signor Panco. 

And how much more might be said — would the 
gods annihilate but time and space for a worthier 
purpose than that of making two lovers happy — 



96 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

of the splendid successes to be noted in the least 
successful book or books of this great and inex- 
haustible writer! And if the figure or develop- 
ment of the story in "Little Dorrit," the shapeliness 
in parts or the proportions of the whole, may seem 
to have suffered from tight-lacing in this part and 
from padding in that, the harmony and unity of 
the masterpiece which followed it made ample and 
gorgeous amends. In "A Tale of Two Cities" 
Dickens, for the second and last time, did history 
the honour to enroll it in the service of fiction. 
This faultless work of tragic and creative art has 
nothing of the rich and various exuberance which 
makes of "Barnaby Rudge" so marvellous an ex- 
ample of youthful genius in all the glowing growth 
of its bright and fiery April; but it has the classic 
and poetic symmetry of perfect execution and of 
perfect design. One or two of the figures in the 
story which immediately preceded it are unusually 
liable to the usually fatuous objection which dul- 
ness has not yet grown decently ashamed of bring- 
ing against the characters of Dickens: to the 
charge of exaggeration and unreality in the post- 
ure or the mechanism of puppets and of daubs, 
which found its final and supremely offensive ex- 
pression in the chattering duncery and the impu- 
dent malignity of so consummate and pseudosophi- 
cal a quack as George Henry Lewes. Not even 
such a past-master in the noble science of defama- 
tion could plausibly have dared to cite in support 
of his insolent and idiotic impeachment either the 
leading or the supplementary characters in "A Tale 



Charles Dickens 97 

of Two Cities." The pathetic and heroic figure of 
Sydney Carton seems rather to have cast into the 
shade of comparative neglect the no less living and 
admirable figures among and over which it stands 
and towers in our memory. Miss Pross and Mr. 
Lorry, Madame Defarge and her husband, are 
equally and indisputably to be recognised by the 
sign of eternal life. 

Among the highest landmarks of genius ever 
reared for immortality by the triumphant genius 
of Dickens, the story of "Great Expectations" 
must forever stand eminent beside that of "David 
Copperfield." These are his great twin master- 
pieces. Great as they are, there is nothing in them 
greater than the very best things in some of his 
other books : there is certainly no person preferable 
and there is possibly no person comparable to 
Samuel Weller or to Sarah Gamp. Of the two 
childish and boyish autobiographers, David is the 
better little fellow though not the more lifelike 
little friend; but of all first chapters is there any 
comparable for impression and for fusion of 
humour and terror and pity and fancy and truth 
to that which confronts the child with the convict 
on the marshes in the twilight? And the story is 
incomparably the finer story of the two; there can 
be none superior, if there be any equal to it, in the 
whole range of English fiction. And except in 
"Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes," if even they 
may claim exception, there can surely be found no 
equal or nearly equal number of living and ever- 
living figures. The tragedy and the comedy, the 



98 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

realism and the dreamery of life, are fused or 
mingled together with little less than Shakespear- 
ean strength and skill of hand. To have created 
Abel Magwitch is to be a god indeed among the 
creators of deathless men. Pumblechook is act- 
ually better and droller and truer to imaginative 
life than Pecksniff : Joe Gargery is worthy to have 
been praised and loved at once by Fielding and by 
Sterne: Mr. Jaggers and his clients, Mr. Wem- 
mick and his parent and his bride, are such figures 
as Shakespeare, when dropping out of poetry, 
might have created, if his lot had been cast in a 
later century. Can as much be said for the crea- 
tures of any other man or god? The ghastly 
tragedy of Miss Havisham could only have been 
made at once credible and endurable by Dickens; 
he alone could have reconciled the strange and 
sordid horror with the noble and pathetic survival 
of possible emotion and repentance. And he alone 
could have eluded condemnation for so gross an 
oversight as the escape from retribution of so im- 
portant a criminal as the "double murderer and 
monster" whose baffled or inadequate attempts are 
enough to make Bill Sikes seem comparatively the 
gentlest and Jonas Chuzzlewit the most amiable 
of men. I remember no such flaw in any other 
story I ever read. But in this story it may well 
have been allowed to pass unrebuked and un- 
observed: which yet I think it should not. 

Among all the minor and momentary figures 
which flash into eternity across the stage of Dick- 
ens, there is one to which I have never yet seen 



Charles Dickens 99 

the tribute of grateful homage adequately or even 
decently paid. The sonorous claims of old Bill 
Barley on the reader's affectionate and respectful 
interest have not remained without response; but 
the landlord's Jack has never yet, as far as I am 
aware, been fully recognised as great among the 
greatest of the gods of comic fiction. We are in- 
troduced to this lifelong friend in a waterside 
public-house as a "grizzled male creature, the 
'Jack' of the little causeway, who Was as slimy and 
smeary as if he had been low watermark too." It 
is but for a moment that we meet him: but 
eternity is in that moment. 

"While we were comforting ourselves by the 
fire after our meal, the Jack — who was sitting in 
a corner, and who had a bloated pair of shoes on, 
which he had exhibited, while we were eating our 
eggs and bacon, as interesting relics that he had 
taken a few days ago from the feet of a drowned 
seaman washed ashore — asked me if we had seen 
a four-oared galley going up with the tide ? When 
I told him No, he said she must have gone down 
then, and yet she 'took up two,' when she left 
there. 

" 'They must ha' thought better on't for some 
reason or another,' said the Jack, 'and gone down.' 

' 'A four-oared galley, did you say?' said I. 

" 'A four,' said the Jack, 'and two sitters.' 

" 'Did they come ashore here?' 

" 'They put in with a stone two-gallon jar for 
some beer. I'd ha' been glad to pison the beer 



100 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

myself/ said the Jack, 'or put some rattling physic 
in it.' 

" 'Why?' 

" 'Z know why,' said the Jack. He spoke in a 
slushy voice, as if much mud had washed into his 
throat. 

" 'He thinks,' said the landlord, a weakly medi- 
tative man with a pale eye, who seemed to rely 
greatly on his Jack, 'he thinks they was, what they 
wasn't.' 

" r I knows what I thinks,' observed the Jack. 

" 'You thinks Custom 'Us, Jack?' said the land- 
lord. 

" 'I do,' said the Jack. 

" 'Then you're wrong, Jack.' 

"'AM I!' 

"In the infinite meaning of his reply and his 
boundless confidence in his views, the Jack took 
one of his bloated shoes off, looked into it, knocked 
a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put 
it on again. He did this with the air of a Jack 
who was so right that he could afford to do any- 
thing. 

" 'Why, what do you make out that they done 
with their buttons then, Jack?' said the landlord, 
vacillating weakly. 

" 'Done with their buttons?' returned the Jack. 
'Chucked 'em overboard. Sjwallered 'em. Sowed 
'em, to come up small salad. Done with their but- 
tons!' 

" 'Don't be cheeky, Jack,' remonstrated the land- 
lord, in a melancholy and pathetic way. 



Charles Dickens 101 

" 'A Custom 'Us officer knows what to do with 
his Buttons,' said the Jack, repeating the obnox- 
ious word with the greatest contempt, 'when they 
comes betwixt him and his own light. A Four and 
two sitters don't go hanging and hovering, up with 
one tide and down with another, and both with and 
against another, without there being Custom 'Us 
at the bottom of it.' Saying which he went out 
in disdain." 

To join Francis the drawer and Cob the water- 
bearer in an ever-blessed immortality. 

This was the author's last great work: the de- 
fects in it are as nearly imperceptible as spots on 
the sun or shadows on a sunlit sea. His last long 
story, "Our Mutual Friend," superior as it is in 
harmony and animation to "Little Dorrit" or 
"Dombey and Son," belongs to the same class of 
piebald or rather skewbald fiction. As in the first 
great prose work of the one greater and far greater 
genius then working in the world the cathedral of 
Notre Dame is the one prevailing and dominating 
presence, the supreme and silent witness of life 
and action and passion and death, so in this last 
of its writer's completed novels the real protago- 
nist — for the part it plays is rather active than pas- 
sive — is the river. Of a play attributed on the 
obviously worthless authority of all who knew or 
who could have known anything about the matter 
to William Shakespeare, but now ascribed on the 
joint authority of Bedlam and Hanwell to the 
joint authorship of Francis Bacon and John 



102 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Fletcher, assisted by the fraternal collaboration 
of their fellow-poets Sir Walter Raleigh and King 
James I, it was very unjustly said by Dr. John- 
son that "the genius of the author comes in and 
goes out with Queen Katharine." Of this book it 
might more justly be said that the genius of the 
author ebbs and flows with the disappearance and 
the reappearance of the Thames. 

That unfragrant and insanitary waif of its rot- 
tenest refuse, the incomparable Rogue Riderhood, 
must always hold a chosen place among the choicest 
villains of our selectest acquaintance. When the 
genius of his immortal creator said "Let there be 
Riderhood," and there was Riderhood, a figure of 
coequal immortality rose reeking and skulking into 
sight. The deliciously amphibious nature of the 
venomous human reptile is so wonderfully pre- 
served in his transference from Southwark Bridge 
to Plashwater Weir Mill Lockhouse that we feel 
it impossible for imagination to detach the water- 
snake from the water, the water-rat from the mud. 
There is a horrible harmony, a hellish consistency, 
in the hideous part he takes in the martyrdom of 
Betty Higden — the most nearly intolerable 
tragedy in all the tragic work of Dickens. Even 
the unsurpassed and unsurpassable grandeur and 
beauty of the martyred old heroine's character can 
hardly make the wonderful record of her heroic 
agony endurable by those who have been so ten- 
derly and so powerfully compelled to love and to 
revere her. The divine scene in the children's hos- 
pital is something that could only have been con- 



Charles Dickens 103 

ceived and that could only have been realised by 
two of the greatest among writers and creators: it 
is a curious and memorable thing that they should 
have shone upon our sight together. 

We can only guess what manner of tribute Vic- 
tor Hugo might have paid to Dickens on reading 
how Johnny "bequeathed all he had to dispose of, 
and arranged his affairs in this world." But a 
more incomparable scene than this is the resurrec- 
tion of Rogue Riderhood. That is one of the very 
greatest works of any creator who ever revealed 
Jiimself as a master of fiction; a word, it should be 
unnecessary to repeat, synonymous with the word 
creation. The terrible humour of it holds the 
reader entranced alike at the first and the hun- 
dredth reading. And the blatant boobies who deny 
truthfulness and realism to the imagination or the 
genius of Dickens, because it never condescended 
or aspired to wallow in metaphysics or in filth, may 
be fearlessly challenged to match this scene for 
tragicomic and everlasting truth in the work of 
Sardou or Ibsen, of the bisexual George Eliot or 
the masculine "Miss Msevia Mannish." M. Zola, 
had he imagined it, as undoubtedly his potent and 
indisputable genius might have done, must have 
added a flavour of blood and a savour of ordure 
which would hardly have gratified or tickled the 
nostrils and the palate of Dickens: but it is pos- 
sible that this insular delicacy or prudery of relish 
and of sense may not be altogether a pitiable in- 
firmity or a derisible defect. Every scene in which 
Mr. Inspector or Miss Abbey Potterson figures is 



104 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

as lifelike as it could be if it were foul instead of 
fair — if it were as fetid with the reek of malodorous 
realism as it is fragrant with the breath of kindly 
and homely nature. 

The fragmentary "Mystery of Edwin Drood" 
has things in it worthy of Dickens at his best: 
whether the completed work would probably have 
deserved a place among his best must always be an 
open question. It is certain that if Shakespeare 
had completed "The Two Noble Kinsmen"; if 
Hugo had completed "Les Jumeaux"; or if 
Thackeray had completed "Denis Duval," the 
world would have been richer by a deathless and a 
classic masterpiece. It is equally certain that the 
grim and tragic humours of the opium den and the 
boy-devil are worthy of the author of "Barnaby 
Budge," that the leading villain is an original 
villain of great promise, and that the interest which 
assuredly, for the average reader, is not awakened 
in Mr. Drood and Miss Bud is naturally aroused 
by the sorrows and perils of the brother and sister 
whose history is inwoven with theirs. It is uncer- 
tain beyond all reach of reasonable conjecture 
whether the upshot of the story would have been 
as satisfactory as the conclusion, for instance, of 
"David Copperfleld" or "Martin Chuzzlewit," or 
as far from satisfactory as the close of "Little Dor- 
rit" or "Dombey and Son." 

If Dickens had never in his life undertaken the 
writing of a long story, he would still be great 
among the immortal writers of his age by grace of 
his matchless excellence as a writer of short stories. 



Charles Dickens 105 

His earlier Christmas books might well suffice for 
the assurance of a lasting fame; and the best of 
them are far surpassed in excellence by his contri- 
butions to the Christmas numbers of his successive 
magazines. We remember the noble "Chimes," 
the delightful "Carol," the entrancing "Cricket on 
the Hearth," the delicious Tetterbys who make 
"The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain" im- 
mortal and unghostly, and even the good stolid 
figure of Clemency Newcome, which redeems 
from the torpid peace of absolute nonentity so 
yearly complete a failure as "The Battle of Life" ; 
but the Christmas work done for "Household 
Words" and "All the Year Round" is at its best 
on a higher level than the best of these. "The 
Wreck of the Golden Mary" is the work of a 
genius till then unimaginable — a Defoe with a hu- 
man heart. More lifelike or more accurate in 
seamanship, more noble and natural in manhood, 
it could not have been if the soul of Shakespeare 
or of Hugo had entered into the somewhat inhu- 
man or at least insensitive genius which begot 
Robinson Crusoe on Moll Flanders. 

Among the others every reader will have his 
special favourites; I do not say his chosen favour- 
ites; he will not choose but find them; it is not a 
question to be settled by judgment but by instinct. 
All are as good of their kind as they need be : chil- 
dren and schoolboys, soldiers and sailors, showmen 
and waiters, landladies and cheap- jacks, signalmen 
and cellarmen: all of them actual and convincing, 
yet all of them sealed of the tribe of Dickens ; real 



106 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

if ever any figures in any book were real, yet as 
unmistakable in their paternity as the children of 
Chaucer, of Shakespeare, or of Fielding. A mod- 
est and honest critic will always, when dealing with 
questions of preference in such matters, be guided 
by the example of the not always exemplary Mr. 
Jingle — "not presume to dictate, but broiled 
fowl and mushrooms — capital thing!" He may 
in that case indicate his own peculiar addiction to 
the society of Toby Magsman and Mr. Chops, 
Captain Jorgan, Mr. Christopher (surely one of 
the most perfect figures ever drawn and coloured 
by such a hand as Shakespeare's or Dekker's or 
Sterne's or Thackeray's) , Mrs. Lirriper and Major 
Jackman, Dr. Marigold, and Barbox Brothers. 
The incredible immensity, measurable by no critic 
ever born, of such a creative power as was needed 
to call all these into immortal life would surely, 
had Dickens never done any work on a larger scale 
of invention and construction, have sufficed for a 
fame great enough to deserve the applause and the 
thanksgiving of all men worthy to acclaim it, and 
the contempt of such a Triton of the minnows as 
Matthew Arnold. A man whose main achieve- 
ment in creative literature was to make himself by 
painful painstaking into a sort of pseudo-Words- 
worth could pay no other tribute than that of 
stolid scorn to a genius of such inexhaustible force 
and such indisputable originality as that of Charles 
Dickens. It is not always envy, I hope and be- 
lieve, which disables and stupefies such brilliant 
and versatile examples of the minor poet and the 



Charles Dickens 107 

minor critic when appreciation of anything new 
and great is found impossible for their self-com- 
placent and self-centred understanding to attain. 
It is just that they cannot see high enough; they 
were born so, and will please themselves; as they 
do, and always did, and always will. And not 
even the tribute of equals or superiors is more pre- 
cious and more significant than such disdain or such 
distaste as theirs. 

These Christmas numbers are not, because of 
their small bulk, to be classed among the minor 
works of Dickens; they are gems as costly as any 
of the larger in his crown of fame. Of his lesser 
works the best and most precious is beyond all 
question or comparison "The Uncommercial 
Traveller"; a book which would require another 
volume of the same size to praise it adequately or 
aright. Not that there are not other short studies 
as good as its very best among the "reprinted 
pieces" which preserve for us and for all time the 
beloved figure of Our Bore, the less delightful 
figures of the noble savage and the begging-letter 
writer, the pathetic plaint of Mr. Meek, and the 
incomparable studies and stories of the detective 
police. We could perhaps dispense with "Pic- 
tures from Italy," and even with "American 
Notes," except for the delicious account or nar- 
rative or description of sea-sickness, which will al- 
ways give such exquisite intensity of rapture to 
boys born impervious to that ailment and suscepti- 
ble only of enjoyment in rough weather at sea as 
can hardly be rivalled by the delight of man or boy 



108 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

in Mrs. Gamp herself. But there is only one book 
which I cannot but regret that Dickens should 
have written ; and I cannot imagine what evil imp, 
for what inscrutable reason in the unjustifiable 
designs of a malevolent Providence, was ever per- 
mitted to suggest to him the perpetration of a 
"Child's History of England." I would almost 
as soon train up a child on Catholic or Calvinistic 
or servile or disloyal principles as on the cheap- 
jack radicalism which sees nothing to honour or 
love or revere in history, and ought therefore to 
confess that it can in reason pretend to see noth- 
ing on which to build any hope of patriotic ad- 
vance or progressive endurance in the future. 

A word may be added on the everlasting subject 
of editors and editions: a subject on which it really 
seems impossible that the countrymen of Shake- 
speare and of Dickens should ever be aroused to a 
sense that the matter is really worth care and con- 
sideration. Instead of reprinting the valuable and 
interesting prefaces written by Dickens for the 
first cheap edition of his collected works (a poor 
little double-columned reissue), the publishers of 
the beautiful and convenient Gadshill series are 
good enough to favour its purchasers with the pref- 
atory importunities of a writer disentitled to ex- 
press and disqualified to form an opinion on the 
work of an English humourist. The intrusive con- 
descension or adulation of such a commentator was 
perhaps somewhat superfluous in front of the re- 
printed Waverley Novels; the offence becomes an 
outrage, the impertinence becomes impudence, 



Charles Dickens 109 

when such rubbish is shot down before the doorstep 
of Charles Dickens. 

It is curious to compare the posthumous fortune 
of two such compeers in fame as Dickens and 
Thackeray. Rivals they were not and could not be : 
comparison or preference of their respective work 
is a subject fit only to be debated by the energetic 
idleness of boyhood. In life Dickens was the more 
prosperous: Thackeray has had the better fortune 
after death. To the exquisite genius, the tender 
devotion, the faultless taste and the unfailing tact 
of his daughter, we owe the most perfect memorial 
ever raised to the fame and to the character of any 
great writer on record by any editor or commenta- 
tor or writer of prefaces or preludes to his work. 
A daughter of Dickens has left us a very charming 
little volume of reminiscences in which we enjoy 
the pleasure and honour of admission to his pri- 
vate presence : we yet await an edition of his works 
which may be worthy to stand beside the biograph- 
ical edition of Thackeray's. So much we ought 
to have : we can demand and we can desire no more. 



VII 

AN UNKNOWN POET 

1875 



AN UNKNOWN POET 

IT is said that all books find their level sooner 
or later; and indeed one would not willingly 
believe that anything of the highest worth can 
in the end be rejected by the judgment of men. 
Yet some great works there undoubtedly are which 
never seem likely to win their due place in general 
repute. How it is that they miss of fame it were 
hard to say; but some cross chance has neverthe- 
less thrown them out of the straight way to it 
which we should have thought natural for them to 
take, and triumph; and time, that sets to right so 
much, forgets to settle their account with the celeb- 
rities and publicities of their day. Some books, 
like some men, seem to have come into the world 
with the brand of mischance on them for birthmark. 
Otherwise it would hardly be needful to refer any 
reader, at the distance of more than half a century, 
to an early sonnet of Keats for introduction to the 
name of Mr. Wells. This sonnet, written before 
the author's friend had himself come forward as a 
poet, remains almost the only indication extant, be- 
sides the all but forgotten existence of his own 
writings, that such a man was alive in that second 
golden age of English poetry which was com- 
prised within the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century; unless the two or three yet fainter refer- 
ences to be found in the published correspondence 
of Keats be admitted as further evidence. But 

113 



114 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

about a year after the death of that poet a puny- 
volume, hardly heavier than a pamphlet, labelled 
"Stories after Nature," was cast upon the waters 
of the world, which received it with unanimous neg- 
lect, and has not yet found it after these many 
days; to be followed in two years' time by a 
"Scriptural Drama," bearing the more decorous 
than attractive title of "Joseph and his Brethren," 
and issued under the pseudonym of H. L. How- 
ard; with a preface dated from London, a motto 
taken from Milton, and two hundred and fifty-two 
pages of clear print. The book has long since sunk 
so far out of general sight that the evidence of such 
details is necessary to convince us that poem and 
poet are not as unsubstantial as the personality of 
the sponsor Howard, as undiscoverable as the rea- 
son which may have induced the author to prefer 
the anonymous form of venture for his first book, 
the pseudonymous for his second. Assuredly 
there was in his case no reason for fear or shame 
in the publication of work not unworthy of the 
time when England still held, or still divided with 
the land of Goethe, that place at the head of Euro- 
pean literature which France was to assume and 
retain after the mighty movement of 1830. Yet, 
though there was proof enough in the latter of 
these two little books that a new poet was in the 
world, and one only lesser than the greatest of his 
time in some of the greatest qualities of his art, the 
critics of the minute could not even spare such no- 
tice to his work as they had accorded to that of 
Keats; not an owl thought it worth while to 



An Unknown Poet 115 

stretch his throat, not an ass to lift up his heel 
against the workman. So the books vanished at 
once; and now only by such happy chance as some- 
times may come to the help of assiduous research 
can they be dug up from the cemeteries of litera- 
ture. At rare casual intervals some thin and 
reedy note of eulogy has been uttered over the 
grave of a noble poem, bewitched as it were to a 
sleep like death; and has always hitherto failed of 
a hearing. Nor did even the choice and eloquent 
words of praise bestowed on it by Mr. Rossetti in 
a supplementary chapter to Gilchrist's Life of 
Blake succeed in attracting the notice which Blake 
himself had not yet won from our generation. 
Notwithstanding, the truth remains, that the au- 
thor of "Joseph and his Brethren" will some day 
have to be acknowledged among the memorable 
men of the second great period in our poetry. 

The first publication of Mr. Wells, written it 
is said in his earliest youth, has much of the charm 
and something of the weakness natural to the first 
flight and the first note of a song-bird, whose wings 
have yet to grow, and whose notes have yet to 
deepen; yet in its first flutterings and twitterings 
there is a nameless grace, a beauty indefinable, 
which belongs only to the infancy of genius as it be- 
longs only to the infancy of life. To a reader of 
the age at which this book was written it will seem 
—or so at least it seemed to me — "perfect in grace 
and power, tender and exquisite in choice of lan- 
guage, full of a noble and masculine delicacy in feel- 
ing and purpose" ; and he will be ready to attribute 



116 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

the utter neglect which has befallen it simply "to 
the imbecile caprice of hazard and opinion." Even 
then, however, he will perceive, if there be in him 
any critical judgment or any promise of such 
faculty to come, that the style of these stories is 
too near poetry to be really praiseworthy as prose; 
that they relish of a bastard graft; that they halt 
between two kinds of merit. At times they will 
seem to him almost to attain the standard of the 
Decameron ; yet even he will remark that they want 
the direct aim and clear comprehension of story 
which are never wanting in Boccaccio. That per- 
fect narrative power which sustains the most poet- 
ical stories even of the fifth day of the Decameron, 
keeping always in full view the simple prose of 
the event, is too often lacking here. And the 
youngest reader will probably take note that 
"there is a savour of impossibility (so to speak), 
a sort of incongruous beauty dividing the subject 
and the style, which removes the 'Stories after Na- 
ture' from our complete apprehension, and baffles 
the reader's delight in them" ; that "even the license 
of a fairy tale is here abruptly leapt over; names 
and places are thrust in which perplex the very 
readiest belief even of that factitious kind which 
we may accord to things practically impossible: 
English kings and Tuscan dukes occupy the place 
reserved in the charity of our imaginations for 
kings of Lyonesse and princesses of Garba; the 
language also is often cast in the mould of Eliza- 
bethan convention; absolute Euphuism, with all its 
fantastic corruptions of style, breaks out and runs 



An Unknown Poet 117 

rampant here and there; especially in a few of the 
more passionate speeches this starched ugliness of 
ruff and rebato will be felt to stiffen and deform 
the style of the same page which contains some of 
the sweetest and purest English ever written." 
On taking up the little book again in after years 
he will also discern the perceptible influence of 
Leigh Hunt in some of the stories; and that sweet 
and graceful essayist, much of whose critical work, 
and not a little of his poetical, retains its charm to 
this day, a soft light fragrance less evanescent 
than it seems, had set no good example in his short 
sentimental narratives for any pupil to follow. 
One or two at least of the younger poet's stories, 
had we found them in the Indicator or some other 
of Hunt's magazines, we should I think have set 
down as somewhat thin and empty samples of the 
editor's hastier work ; in others there is a fresh and 
exquisite beauty which is due to no inspiration but 
his own. 

But in whatever degree the undeniable presence 
of minor faults and mere stains of carelessness may 
excuse the neglect of Mr. Wells's prose stories, no 
such plea of passing defect can extenuate the 
scandal of the fact that to this day his great dra- 
matic poem remains known perhaps on the whole 
to about half a dozen students of English art. As 
its extreme simplicity of design would make the 
analytic method of criticism here inapplicable, I 
shall merely attempt to give a slight practical taste 
of its quality by such excerpts as may seem to me 
likeliest or fittest to convey some adequate percep- 



118 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

tion of the spirit and the style of a work in which 
the hardest things are done best, and the author's 
capacity of success expands with his occasion for it. 
The poem opens with a chorus which in point of 
mere beauty of words and solemn power of cadence 
is as noticeable as any part of the book. Take the 
first lines as a sample: 

"In the dim age when yet the rind of earth, 
Unworn by time, gave eager nature life, 
Zealous to furnish what the seasons wore 
That in a vigorous brightness flourished; 
When light and dark and constellations bright, 
The splendid sun, the silent gliding moon, 
Governed men's habits; taught them when to thrive, 
To rest, and sleep ; till full of temperate years, 
Rude in their art, and ignorant of all 
Save passions and affections wild, untaught, 
They sank like giants in an earthy pit, 
Leaving the generation of their days 
'Twixt grief and reverence to mourn their loss 
And miss them from the village and the field; — 
God's voice (that mingled up the beauteous world, 
Inlaid pure heaven and sweetly coloured it; 
And with the wondrous magic of the clouds 
Enveils the sacred flooring evermore, 
Without bright golden, but within more rare) 
Was then upon the earth and with men's ears, 
Creating reverence and faith and love." 

Notwithstanding the weakness and tenuity of 
workmanship noticeable in some of these verses, 
the whole overture has true dignity and simple 
harmony, of which we may take in witness another 
line or two. 



An Unknown Poet 119 

"While the sun sinking from his daily round 
Had starred the heavens like a fiery flaw, 
Showing his glory greater than the west. 
. . . He was declined . . . 
A god gigantic habited in gold, 
Stepping from off a mount into the sea." 

But the whole passage from which these verses are 
torn out is an example of nobly detailed descrip- 
tion. About the slightest part of it there is a 
certain exaltation of style which supports the 
whole, even when there might seem an over sim- 
plicity or superfluity of verse. 

The first part, ending with the sale of Joseph to 
the Midianites, is written throughout with a won- 
derful ease and stateliness of manner which recall 
the more equable cadences of Shakespeare. The 
pure dramatic quality is perhaps best shown in the 
characters of Reuben and Issachar, where the poet 
has found least material for his workmanship in 
the original story. Especially the rough spite of 
this latter, as deep and bitter as a cooler or more 
patient hatred could be, is so well given that his 
part stands out distinct in our memories till the 
end; the "strong ass," hard and blunt, readiest to 
strike and slowest to suffer. Jacob again is a 
clear and vigorous sketch; all excess of weakness 
has been avoided, and the baser aspect of age and 
fondness kept out of our thoughts. There is a 
genuine force of dramatic effect in his sudden ap- 
pearance and upbraiding of the brothers. 



120 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

"Come hither, Joseph. Up, my boy; ne'er weep. 
Cast down the grapes, the fruits and figs you bear, 
That were to sup their graceless hungry lips; 
Down with them in the mire, close to their feet; 
And, since they throw away the love of men 
As 'twere but the contemned rind of life, 
Like their own oxen let them stoop and feed, 
Befitting their wild passions; for I swear, 
Nought shall they eat or drink from off my board 
Until the dawn; nor then unless their love 
Becurd and thicken; and their anger melt 
'Like icicles away. 

Judah. We grieve indeed 

That you, so partial, stint us of your love. 

Jacob. A lie ! a lie ! you envy this young slip. 
Wilt thou teach me, thou climbing, scanty elm? 

Me, who have kept my brow upon men's deeds 

More than six times thine observation 

(Being so much more thine age; six times as wise) ? 

Will you tell me your love degrades you thus ? 

. I have a fear of you; 
For envy might lead men to cast poor stones 
At heaven while it thunders; death waits on it; 
On hatred still it feeds, and hideous dreams: 

In meanness it begins ; proceeds to blood ; 
And dies of sallow horror by itself." 

And this of Joseph's, a little further on, has in it 
a grand Elizabethan echo:— 

"Would they be envious, let them then be great, 
Envy old cities, ancient neighbourhoods, 
Great men of trust and iron-crowned kings; 
For household envy is a household rat; 



An Unknown Poet 121 

Envy of state a devil of some fear. 

E'en in my sleep my mind doth eat strange food, 

Enough to strengthen me against this hate." 

But indeed all this scene is worth study for re- 
served power and exquisite expression. The next 
scene, though less effective at first sight, is well 
placed as an interlude of rest before the harsher 
action of the drama. From the scene in which 
Joseph is taken and sold, and the forged news of 
his death broken to his father, it is very difficult 
to break off any part as a specimen. We find 
throughout that high dramatic insight and delicate 
justice of arrangement which can only be under- 
stood by a straightforward reading. Such frag- 
ments as the following may be given in evidence 
of the author's subtle strength of style and com- 
mand of sweet words; but their main merit is lost 
in the violence done to the context by extracting 
them. 

"Simeon. Reuben, he doth contemn us of his birth; 

he doth take 

A deep exception to our fellowship 
That was decreed him ere he was begot. 
Rachel (the beautiful, as she was called) 
Despised our mother Leah for that she 
Was tender-eyed, lean-favoured, and did lack 
The pulpy ripeness swelling the white skin 
To sleek proportions beautiful and round, 
With wrinkled joints so fruitful to the eye. 

Her full dark eye, whose brightness silvered through 

The sable lashes soft as camel-hair; 

Her slanting head curved like the maiden moon 



122 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

And hung with hair luxuriant as a vine 
And blacker than a storm; her rounded ear 
Turned like a shell upon some golden shore; 

Her whispering foot that carried all her weight 
Nor left its little pressure on the sand; 
Her lips as drowsy poppies soft and red 
Gathering a dew from her escaping breath: 

Her neck o'ersoftened like to unsunned curd; 
Her tapering fingers rounded to a point; 
The silken softness of her veined hand; 
Her dimpled knuckles answering to her chin; 
And teeth like honeycombs o' the wilderness: 
All these did tend to a bad proof in her." 

There is something in this passage which recalls 
the luxury and exuberance, if not the vigour and 
concentration, of Marlowe's sweet and fiery rap- 
tures. As fine, but in another fashion, is the 
speech of Reuben which follows it; full of thought 
and pliant power compressed into brief grand 
words. 

"For when an evil deed is thus abroach, 
The will predominant the judgment blinds, 
And he who seeks to lay it with advice 
Feeds and provokes it. . . . 
The will doth push itself beyond itself, 
And full of madness doth provoke to ire 
By its own act, to fret and carve a way 
To all destruction. Mercy is but a spur 
To goad on faster to its red design; 
And sense feeds on the senses." 

Verses as good as these might be gathered from 
all parts of the first act, especially in the scene 



An Unknown Poet 123 

where Joseph is taken from the pit and offered to 
the merchants — 

"Swarthy Egyptians, yellow as their gold, 
Riding on mules;" 

a scene which abounds in passages fit for citation; 
for example, the description of the costly wares 
and trading life of the Ishmaelites; and later in 
the play we may note the imprecations of Reuben 
on the brethren (too much prolonged it may be, 
but rich in splendid verses and weighty turns of 
thought) ; the gradual breaking of the evil tidings 
to Jacob; and the lofty prelude-music of the cho- 
rus before the second act. But the crowning tri- 
umph of the poem is to be found there where the 
kernel of the whole story lies. Before giving any 
extracts from these central scenes, some rough 
summary must be given of the chief character in 
them as conceived by Mr. Wells. 

Only once before had such a character been 
given with supreme success, and only by him who 
has given all things rightly, in whom there was no 
shadow of imperfection or failure. In the Cleo- 
patra of Shakespeare and in the heroine of the 
present play there is the same imperious conscience 
of power by right of supreme beauty and supreme 
strength of will; the same subtle sweetness of 
speech; the same delicately rendered effect of per- 
fection in word and gesture, never violated or 
made harsh even by extreme passion ; the same evi- 
dence of luxurious and patient pleasure found in 
all things sensually pleasant; the same capacity of 



124 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

bitter shame and wrath, dormant until the insult 
of resistance or rebellion has been offered;, the 
same contemptuous incapacity to understand a 
narrower passion or a more external morality than 
their own; the same rapid and supple power of 
practical action. All women in literature after 
these two seem coarse or trivial when they touch 
on anything sensual; but in their passion there is 
nothing common or unclean; nothing paltry, no 
taint of vulgar sin or more vulgar repentance, can 
touch these two. And this the later poet, at least, 
has made out of the slightest and thinnest material 
possible; his original being not only insufficient — > 
the very bare bones of conjecture, the suggestion 
of a skeleton character — but actually, as far as 
it was anything at all, so associated with ideas 
simply ludicrous and base that the very name of 
"Potiphar's wife" has the sound of a coarse by- 
word. 

To prove by detailed extracts the truth of what 
has been said is no light task within such limits as 
ours. Still it must surely be evident to any reader 
that the following is a noble and most dramatic 
opening, worthy of Shakespeare's own art and 
judgment. Phraxanor enters laughing, and turns 
suddenly upon the steward: — 

"I check in my laughter; dost thou notice it? 

Canst tell me why? 
Joseph. Madam, I have not thought. 

Phraxanor. Wert thou to guess on the left side of me 

Thou'dst wake the knowledge. 
Joseph. How so? I do not see. 



An Unknown Poet 125 

Phraxanor. Because my heart doth grow on the left side. 

. . . Ah me ! alas ! 

My mirth was of my head, not of my heart, 

And mocked my patience. 
Joseph. I am grieved at this. 

Phraxanor. Nay, no physician e'er did heal a wound 

By grieving at the hurt. Yet a white hand 

O'erspreaded with the tendril veins of youth 

Hath quieted a lady's gentle side, 

And taught her how to smile. . . . 

Thou dwell'dst at Canaan, said'st thou? 
Joseph. Madam, I did. 

Phraxanor. What kind of air? 

Joseph. Warm and congenial. 

Phraxanor. Indeed? I've generally heard that men 

Are favoured of the climate where they live. 

Bethink thee — surely our hot Egypt has 

Swolten thy recollection of the place. 

Thou'rt like a man that's nurtured upon ice, 

Fed with a spongy snow. . . . 

Congenial, said'st thou? — There's no drop that's warm 

Coursing another round those purple veins. 

Here, let me touch your hand; it is cold — cold — 

I've Egypt's sun in mine. 
Joseph. Pure fire indeed. 

You do mistake; my hand is not so cold; 

Though I confess I've known it warmer far, 

For I have struggled against heated blood 

And am proficient in forbearances. 
Phraxanor. Indeed? are women's wits then merely dust 

Blown by a puff of resolution 

Into their doting eyes? 
Joseph. Wit is but air — 

For dust the queen becomes; if she be good, 

She breaks to gold and diamond dust, past worth, 



126 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

The proper metal of a perfect star; 
If she be not, embalming is no cure. 

Phraxanor. Nay, throw aside 

This ponderous mask of gravity you wear, 

Or give it me, and I will cast it forth 

To where my husband governs his affairs; 

It will not reach him, nor be recognised 

More than if he were blind. Come here, I say — 

Come here. 
Joseph. What would you, madam? I attend. 

Phraxanor. Why, put your fingers on my burning brow 

That you have stirred into this quenchable heat, 

And touch the mischief that your eye has made — 

Do it, I say, or I will raise the house — 

Why, that is well. Now I will never say 

A sudden word to startle thee again, 

But use the gentlest breath a woman has. 

Aye, now you may remove your hand. Yet stay — 

I did not say withdraw it; you mistake; 

You are too jealous of the wondrous toy, 

Leave it with me and I will give you mine; 

I hold it as a bird that I do love, 

Yet fear to lose. — Fie on that steward's ring ! 

Now, should it slip, it will fall in my neck." 

Left alone, and foiled for a time, she questions 
thus with herself; 

"Now should I be revenged of mine own face, 

And with my nails dig all this beauty out 

And pit it into honeycombs. Yet no; 

I will enjoy the air; feed daintily; 

Be bountiful in smiles; . . . 

For he who will not stoop him for desire 

Strides o'er that pity which is short of death. 



An Unknown Poet 127 

Vaporous desire like a flame delayed 
Creeps in my pulses and babbles of its bounds 
Too mean, too limited a girth for it. 
Impatience frets me; yet I will be proud 
And muse upon the conquest ere 'tis won, 
For won it shall be. Oh dull Potiphar, 
To leave thy wife and travel for thy thrift 
While such a spirit tendeth here her wine. 
Ho, give me music there — play louder — so." 

The passion of these scenes is managed with 
such a noble temperance and so just an art, that 
a first reading even of the play in full, instead of 
those mangled extracts, plucked up almost at haz- 
ard, will hardly suffice to show the author's superb 
mastery of his own genius. Such wealth and such 
wisdom in the use of it, such luxury and such for- 
bearance of style, are in the highest Elizabethan 
manner. 

In the next scene Phraxanor reasons of love with 
an attendant, whose character, the very dimmest 
sketch possible, is designed seemingly as a relief 
to her own. There is a flavour of sentimental 
chastity in the few speeches allotted her which 
makes them feeble and flimsy enough; but this 
weak emptiness of the girl serves somehow to set 
off and exalt the splendid sensuous vigour of 
Phraxanor's share in the dialogue. Here again 
we can but give the opening, and a few more 
casual fragments. The scene is of some length, 
but throughout of solid and exquisite value. 

"Phraxanor. Dost thou despise love then? 
Attendant. Madam, not quite: 



128 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

A ruby that is pure is better worth 

Than one that's flawed and streaked with the light; 

So is a heart. 
Phraxanor. A ruby that is flawed 

Is better worth than one that's sunk a mile 

Beneath the dry sand of some desert place; 

So is a heart. 
Attendant. Then, madam, you would say 

That there is nothing in the world but love. 
Phraxanor. Not quite; but I would say the fiery sun 

Doth not o'ershine the galaxy so far; 

Nor doth a torch within a jewelled mine 

Amaze the eye beyond this diamond here 

More than the ruddy offices of love 

Do glow before the common steps of life." 

This last has the absolute ring of Shakespeare; 
"pure fire indeed." There are in the same scene 
two magnificent passages of prolonged and subtle 
rhetoric, finer perhaps as pieces of conscious and 
imperious sophistry than anything in the way of 
poetical reasoning that has since been done. The 
first, a panegyric on love; 

"Bravery of suits enriching the bright eye; 
Sweetness of person; pleasure in discourse; 
And all the reasons why men love themselves; 
Nay, even high offices, renown and praise, 
Greatness of name, honour of men's regard, 
Power and state and sumptuous array, 
Do pay a tribute at the lips of love. 

Though but the footstool of a royal king, 

When we betray and trip him to the earth 

His crown doth roll beneath us. Horses have not 

Such power to grace their lords or break their necks 

As we, for we add passion to our power." 



An Unknown Poet 129 

The second passage referred to is deeper in 
thought and more intricate in writing than any 
other speech in the play. It is a subtle plea in 
defence of inconstancy in women; this incon- 
stancy, as governed and directed by art and prac- 
tical skill, being (in the speaker's mind) the 
substitute for that laborious singleness of heart 
and devotion of the will to bare truth which make 
a man the stronger by nature of the two, but 
which a woman cannot (it is argued) attain or 
retain without violating her nature and abdicating 
her power upon man. Truth is indeed the grand- 
est of abstractions: — 

"Truth is sublime; the unique excellence; 
The height of wisdom, the supreme of power, 
The principle and pivot of the world, 
The keystone that sustains the arched heavens; 
And Time, the fragment of Eternity, 
Eternity itself, but fills the scale 
In Truth's untrembling hand. His votaries 
Belong to him entire, not he to them; 
The immolation must be all complete, 
And woman still makes reservation. 

Our feeling, wench, is like the current coin, 
No counterfeit, for it doth bear our weight, 
The perfect image, absolute, enthroned; 
Now the king's coin belongs to many men 
And only by allowance is called his; 
Just so our feeling stands with circumstance." 

But the power to pierce through personal thought 
to absolute truth, the "reasoning imagination" 
proper to man, 



130 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

"Is compromised in our maternal sex; 
Ours is a present, not an abstract power." 

That is why art is wanted to make the balance 
sway back to the woman's side : 

"If Art and Honesty do run a race, 
Which tumbles in the mire? ask those that starve. 

Therefore since Truth requires that I should lay 
Me prostrate at her feet and worship her 
Rather than wield her sceptre and her power, 
,1 shall be bold to follow mine own way 
And use the world as I find wit and means; 
And as I know of nothing but old age, 
So nothing will I fear: — but I waste words 
You do not understand." 

She then turns back the discourse to questions of 
love, handling (as it were) her own heart deli- 
cately, and weighing beforehand the power of her 
senses to bear pleasure. 

"The sultry hour well suits occasion; 
That silk of gossamer like tawny gold — 
Throw it on loosely. . . . 
See to the neck; fit thou some tender lace 
About the rim. The precious jewel shown 
But scantily is oft desired most, 
And tender nets scare not the timid bird. 
A little secret is a tempting thing 
Beyond wide truth's confession. Give me flowers 
That I may hang them in my ample hair; 
And sprinkle me with lavender and myrrh. 
Zone me around with a broad chain of gold 
And wreath my arms with pearls. So — this will do." 

Now at length, after all this noble repose of prep- 



An Unknown Poet 131 

aration, Joseph enters with a message from his 
master. She fastens upon him at once. 

"Phraxanor. Put that to rest. 

Give me that golden box, there's ointment in it. 
[She spills it on his head. 
Joseph. Madam, what must I say? My state is low, 

Yet you do treat me as you might my lord 

When he besought your hand. 
Phraxanor. Must I get up 

And cast myself in your sustaining arms 

To sink you to a seat? — Come, sit — sit. 

Now I will neighbour you and tell you why 

I cast that ointment on you. 
Joseph. I did not 

Desire it. 
Phraxanor. You asked me for it. 
Joseph. Madam ? 

Phraxanor. You breathed upon me as you did advance, 

And sweets do love sweets for an offering. 

My breath is sweet as subtle, yet I dared 

Not put my lips half close enough to thine 

To render back the favour : so I say 

The obligation did demand as much." 

This scene is throughout managed with such 
supreme dexterity that one overlooks the almost 
ludicrous or repellent side of it, for which Mr. 
Wells is not responsible. The temptress here is 
not repulsive, and the hero is hardly ridiculous. 

We continue our task of inadequate selection 
and enforced mutilation: let only the reader 
recollect that what appears here rough and im- 
perfect is in the original smooth, just, and com- 
plete. Every precious thing here given is forcibly 
wrenched out of a setting not less precious. 



132 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

"Phraxanor. Listen to me, or else 

I'll set my little foot upon thy neck. 
... A poisoned cup 

Might curdle all the features of thy face, 
But this same blandishment upon my brow, 
Could never chase the colour from thy cheeks. 

Contemptible darkness never yet did dull 
The splendour of love's penetrating light. 
At love's slight curtains that are made of sighs, 
Though e'er so dark, silence is seen to stand 
Like to a flower closed in the night. 

Pulses do sound quick music in love's ear, 

And blended fragrance in his startled breath 

Doth hang the hair with drops of magic dew. 

All outward thoughts, all common circumstance, 

Are buried in the dimple of his smile; 

And the great city like a vision sails 

From out the closing doors of the hushed mind. 

His heart strikes audibly against his ribs 

As a dove's wing doth freak upon a cage, 

Forcing the blood athro' the cramped veins 

Faster than dolphins do o'ershoot the tide 

Coursed by the yawning shark. Therefore, I say, 

Night-blooming Ceres, and the star-flower sweet, 

The honeysuckle, and the eglantine, 

And the ring'd vinous tree that yields red wine, 

Together with all intertwining flowers, 

Are plants most fit to ramble o'er each other 

And form the bower of all-precious love, 

Shrouding the sun with fragrant bloom and leaves 

From jealous interception of love's gaze. 

Henceforth I'll never knit with glossed bone, 
But interlace my fingers around thine, 
And ravel them, and interlace again, 



An Unknown Poet 133 

So that no work that's done content the eye, 
That I may never weary in my work. 

Beware ! you'll crack my lace. 
Joseph. You will be hurt. 

Phraxanor. O for some savage strength! 
Joseph. Away ! Away ! 

Phraxanor. So you are loose — I pray you kill me — do. 
Joseph. Let me pass out at door. 
Phraxanor. I have a mind 

You shall at once walk with those honest limbs 

Into your grave." 

-The quiet heavy malice of that is as worthy of 
Shakespeare as the elaborate and faultless music 
of the passage on love. By way of reply to all 
this Joseph sums up the benefits he has received 
at the hands of Potiphar; ending thus: 

"Madam! this man 
Into whose noble and confiding breast 
I will not thrust a vile ensanguined hand 
To tear from thence a palpitating heart, 
Is your most honourable lord and mine. 

[She stamps her foot. 
Phraxanor. Leap to thy feet, I say, unless thou wouldst 
Set up to be the universal fool. 

Thou art right well enamoured of this lord — 
'My lord' — 'my lord' — canst thou not ever mouth 
That word distinctly from 'my lady'? out on 
'My lord' ! he surely shall be paid full home 
That honours lords above a lady's love. 
Thou hast no lord but me — I am thy lord — 
And thou shalt find it too: fool that I was 



134 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

To stoop my stateliness to such a calf 
Because he bore about a panther's hide! 

Were't not that royalty has kissed my hand 

I'd surely strike thee. 
Joseph. Madam! be temperate. 

Phraxanor. Dost thou expect to live! — 

Who bade thee speak ? impudent slave, beware ! 

Thou shalt be whipped. . . . 

Disgrace to Egypt and her burning air ! 

Thou shalt not stay in Egypt. 
Joseph. I grieve at that. 

Phraxanor. I'm changed. Thou shalt stay here — and since 
I see 

There is no spirit of life in all this show, 

Only a cheat unto the sanguine eye, 

Thou shalt be given to the leech's hands 

To study causes on thy bloodless heart 

Why men should be like geese. . . . 

. . . These knees, 

That ne'er did bend but to pluck suitors up 

And put them out of hope — Oh, I am mad! 

These feet by common accident have trod 

On better necks than e'er bowed to the king, 

And must I tie them in a band of list 

Before a slave like thee? 
Joseph. Still I look honestly. 

Phraxanor. Thy looks are grievous liars, like my eyes; 

They juggled me to think thou wert a man. 

If seeming make men, thou art one indeed. 

Seeming, forsooth ! Why, what hadst thou to do, 

When thou might'st feast thy lips on my eye-lids, 

To hang thy head o'er thy left shoulder thus — 

Blinking at honesty? . . . 

. . . Thou Honesty! 

Show me thy proper pet, that when one such 



An Unknown Poet 135 

In all her soberness may meet my eye, 
I may prepare to burn her with my gaze. 

Soft! what a fool am I to rave about! 
I have mistook my passion all this while; 
Thou implement of honesty, it is 
Not scorn but laughter that is due to thee. 
I'll keep thee as an antic, that when dull 
Thou may'st kill heavy time. 

Dry as a wild boar's tongue in honesty — 
And yet that hath an essence tending to 
Its savage growth. Thou shock of beaten corn! 
Thou hollow pit, lacking a goodly spring! 
Tempting the thirsty soul to come and drink, 
Then cheating him with dust and barrenness — 
Thou laughable affectation of man's form! 
. . . Are all those Canaanites 
Like you? ha? 

Joseph. An they were, 'twere no disgrace. 

Phraxanor. I'll prick my arm and they shall suck the blood 
To make men of them. . . . 
Ah thou poor temperate and drowsy drone! 
You empty glass ! you balk to eyes, lips, hands ! 
Ha, ha ! I will command the masons straight 
Hew you in stone and set you on the gate 
Hard by the public walk where dames resort; 
Therein you shall fool more admiring eyes 
(A plague upon these embers in my throat), 
For you fooled mine, and I like company. 

Joseph. You do me bitter wrong — unladylike — 
A scourgeable, a scarlet-hooded wrong, 
When thus you pack my shoulders with your shame. 

Phraxanor. Ha! have I touched thee? art thou sensible? 
I prithee do not fret, my pretty lute, 
I shall shed tears, sweet music, if thou fret. 



136 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Thou shalt be free like a rare charmed snake 

To range a woman's secret chamber through. 

Here, take my mantle, gird it o'er thy loins, 

And steep thy somewhat browned face in milk: 

I have a sister, a young tender thing, 

To her I will prefer thee, a she-squire, 

To brace her garments and to bleach her back 

With sweet of almonds. A mere parrot thou, 

Tiring her idle ear, and gaping for 

An almond for thy pains. O thou dull snipe! 

Joseph. This may be well, but it affects not me. 

Phraxanor. O madam! do not fret — madam, I say! 

Joseph. O peace ! you pass all bounds of modesty. 

Phraxanor. Pray write upon thy cap 'This is a man' — 
A plague and the pink fever fall on thee! 
I am thrown out — thou'st nettled me outright — 
Who knocks there? wait awhile, the door is fast: — 
Nay, stand thou here, I will not let thee pass." 

It would be impertinent to remark on the mar- 
vellous grace and strength of all this — the subtle 
rapid changes of passion, the life and heat of blood 
in every verse, the sublime intense power of con- 
tempt which seems to make the written words bite 
and burn, the swift dramatic unison of so many- 
sudden and sharp fancies of wrath with the aptest 
and most facile expression. Perhaps, however, 
the chief success is still behind ; for after the return 
of Potiphar it must have been a labour of especial 
difficulty to keep up the scene at the same pitch. 
Nevertheless, the writer's power never flags or 
falls off for an instant, from the moment when 
Phraxanor turns from Joseph towards her return- 
ing husband*— « 



An Unknown Poet 137 

"My injuries rejoice; 
I turn my back on thee as on the dead. 
— Ah! give me breath." 

The picture of Joseph's fidelity is as fine as her 
invective : — 

"Your trust was pure as silver, bright as a flame, 

Forged in your equity, fined in your truth, 

Stubborn in honesty as stapled iron: 

Your charity was wise, like soaking rain 

That falleth in a famine on that ground 

That hath the seed locked up. So far, all honour. 

Your love and duty to my lord were like 

A mine of gold ; but out, alas ! the fault — 

You fell in twain like to a rotten plank 

When he was tempted in to count his wealth — 

There was no bottom to 't, he broke his neck. 

— Will you praise him, my honoured lord? 
Potiphar. Why so? 

Phraxanor. Because he never must be praised again." 

This is another of those instances of reserve which 
abound in Shakespeare only. Touches like these 
occur in Webster, but hardly in any third drama- 
tist. Cyril Tourneur perhaps has hit here and 
there upon something of the same effect. 

The hesitation of Potiphar to believe a charge 
so incongruous as that laid upon Joseph is ad- 
mirably given; not less admirable is the explana- 
tion of Phraxanor, which if the space were larger 
might here be cited. Joseph's vindication of his 
father's honour from the taunts of both wife and 
husband is another noble and quotable passage; 
and the fierce brief inquisition of Phraxanor 



138 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

which follows it is as dramatic as anything in the 
great preceding scene. We can spare space but 
for one more extract. 

"Joseph. If I did ever wrong thee in an act, 
In thought, or in imagination, 
May I never taste bread again. Oh God! 
Try me not thus: my infirmity is love; 
I can be dumb and suffer, but must speak 
When there's a strife of love between two hearts. 

Phraxanor. Ha, thou still wear'st thy heart upon thy tongue 
And paint'st the raven white with cunning words: 
Slave, thou art over-bold, because thou think'st 
The grossness of thine outrage seals my lips: 
But thou shalt be deceived; behold this chain: 
Say, did it fall in twain of its own weight, 
Or was it broken by thy violence? 
Speak — liar. [She plucks him by the beard. 

Joseph. Madam, try rather at my heart. 

Potiphar. Phraxanor, you forget your dignity. 

Phraxanor. My lord, my indented lips still taste of his: 
Myrah, bring water here and wash my hand — 
It is offended by this leprous slave. 

Potiphar. How dar'st thou do as thou hast been accused? 

Phraxanor. Thou hast denied me; what hast thou to say? 

Phraxanor. Put him to that; aye, let him answer that. 

Joseph. I am like a simple dove within a net, 
The more I strive, the faster I am bound. 
My wit is plain and straight, not crooked craft; 
The sight that reaches heaven tires in a lane. 

Phraxanor. You will not answer; 'tis the strangest knave 
I ever met or heard of in my time." 

Baited thus, he turns upon her at last, and 
avows — 

"She would have tempted me, but I refused 
To heap up pain on my so honoured lord. 



An Unknown Poet 139 

Phraxanor. Ha, ha! there is your steward, 'honoured lord' — 
His masterpiece of wit is shown at last. 
Ha, ha! I pray you now take no offence, 
But let him go, and slip your slight revenge. 
Now that the man is known I have no fear. 
Thus cunning ever spoileth its own batch — 
Doth it not, steward? Hold him still in trust — 
But for this fault he were a worthy man. 

. . . Steward, farewell; 
For ever fare you well; and learn this truth — 
When women are disposed to wish you well 
Do not you trespass on their courtesy, 
Lest in their deep resentment you lie drowned 
As now you do in mine. I leave you, sir, 
Without a single comfort in the world. [Exit. 

Joseph. God is in heaven, madam! with your leave." 

From this departure of Phraxanor to the end of 
the play, the interest of it is rather in the poet's 
power of workmanship than in the subject-matter; 
as indeed could not but be, taking into account the 
reaction which must follow on such scenes as those 
in the house of Potiphar. Here therefore we close 
our labour of extraction ; although passages of ex- 
cellent effect might be taken from any of the later 
scenes. The famine in Canaan, the triumphal 
procession of "the swart Pharaoh full of majesty," 
and finally the advent of Jacob, are all given with 
that admirable vigour proper to this great poet; 
and further stray lines and sentences of perfect 
worth might be picked out and strung together till 
half the book were transcribed. 

This is no part of our task. By the specimens 
we have already brought in evidence it may now 
be judged how far this play, taken at its highest, 



140 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

falls short of the world's chief dramatic achieve- 
ments. What its author might have done had his 
genius found space to work in and students to 
work for, no one can say. It may be that only 
the supine and stertorous dullness of fashion and 
accident has kept out of sight a poet who was 
meant to take his place among the highest. 



VIII 
JOHN NICHOL'S "HANNIBAL' 

1872 



JOHN NICHOL'S "HANNIBAL" * 

THE historic or epic drama, as perhaps we 
might more properly call it, is assuredly 
one of the hardest among the highest 
achievements of poetry. The mere 
scope or range of its aim is so vast, so various, so 
crossed and perplexed by diverse necessities and 
suggestions starting from different points of view, 
that the simple intellectual difficulty is enough to 
appal and repel any but the most laborious servants 
of the higher Muse; and to this is added the one 
supreme necessity of all — to vivify the whole mass 
of mere intellectual work with imaginative fire; 
to kindle and supple and invigorate with poetic 
blood and breath the inert limbs, the stark lips 
and empty veins of the naked subject: a task in 
which the sculptor who fails of himself to give his 
statue life will find no favouring god to help him 
by inspiration or infusion from without of an alien 
and miraculous vitality. In this case Pygmalion 
must look to himself for succour, and put his trust 
in no hand but his own. 

There are two ways in which a poet may treat 
a historic subject: one, that of Marlowe and 
Shakespeare, in the fashion of a dramatic chroni- 
cle; one, that of the greatest of all later drama- 
tists, who seizes on some point of historic tradition, 

i Hannibal: a Historical Drama. By JOHN NICHOL. Glasgow: 
Maclehose. London: Macmillan. 

143 



144 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

some character or event proper or possible to the 
time chosen, be it actual or ideal, and starting 
from this point takes his way at his will, and from 
this seed or kernel develops as it were by evolution 
the whole fabric of his poem. It would be hard 
to say which method of treatment requires the 
higher and the rarer faculty; to throw into poetic 
form and imbue with dramatic spirit the whole 
body of an age, the whole character of a great 
event or epoch, by continuous reproduction of his- 
toric circumstance and exposition of the recorded 
argument scene by scene; or to carve out of the 
huge block of history and chronicle some detached 
group of ideal figures, and give them such form 
and colour of imaginative life as may seem best 
to you. In some of the greatest plays of Victor 
Hugo there is hardly more than a nominal con- 
nection perceptible at first sight with historical 
character or circumstance. In Marion de Lor me, 
Richelieu is an omnipresent shadow, a spectral 
omnipotence; Mary Tudor was never convicted 
before any tribunal but the poet's of any warmer 
weakness than the religious faith which had heat 
enough only to consume other lives than her own 
in other flames than in those of illicit love; and 
Lucrezia Estense Borgia died peaceably in lawful 
childbed, in the fifteenth year of her fourth mar- 
riage. Nevertheless, these great works belong 
properly to the class of historical drama; they 
have in them the breath and spirit of the chosen 
age, and the life of their time informs the chosen 
types of ideal character. The Cromwell of Hugo, 



John NichoVs "Hannibal" 145 

in his strength and weakness, his evil and his good, 
is as actual and credible a human figure as the 
Cromwell of Carlyle, whether or not we accept as 
probable or possible matter of historic fact the 
alloy of baser metal which we here see mingled 
with the fine gold of heroic intellect and action. 
He who can lay hold of truth need fear no charge 
of falsehood in his free dealing with mere fact; 
and this first play of Hugo's, in my mind the most 
wonderful intellectual production of any poet on 
record at the age of twenty-five, is with all its 
license of invention and diversion of facts, an ex- 
ample throughout of perfect poetic truth and life. 
It is to the former school — to the school founded, 
in his Edward II., by the great father of English 
tragedy — that we have now to welcome the acces- 
sion of a new and a worthy disciple. In this large 
and perilous field of work the labourers of any note 
or worth have been few indeed. Except for the 
one noble drama in which Ford has embodied a 
brief historic episode, the field has lain fallow from 
the age of Shakespeare to our own; and our own 
has produced but one workman equal to the task; 
for even the single attempt of Mr. Browning in 
the line of pure historic drama can hardly be 
counted as successful enough to rank with the 
master poem of Sir Henry Taylor. Nor indeed 
are we likely to see the work in this kind which 
for intellectual majesty and interest, for large and 
serene possession of character and event, for grasp 
and mastery of thought and action, may deserve 
to be matched against Philip van Artevelde. But 



146 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

it is to the same class of "chronicle history," to use 
the Shakespearian term of definition, that Mr. 
Nichol's drama of Hannibal must properly be as- 
signed. The daring and magnitude of the design 
would alone suffice to make it worthy of note, even 
were the success accomplished less real than we 
find it to be. The man who attempts in an age 
of idyllic poetry to write a heroic poem, or to write 
a dramatic poem in an age of analytic verse, de- 
serves at least the credit due to him who sees and 
knows the best and highest, and strives to follow 
after it with all his heart and might. For the 
higher school of intellectual poetry must always 
of its nature be dramatic and heroic; these are 
assuredly the highest and the best things of art, 
and not the delicacies or intricacies of the idyllic 
or the analytic school of writing. The two chief 
masters of song are the dramatist and the lyrist; 
and in the higher lyric as well as in the higher 
drama the note sounded must have in it some- 
thing of epic or heroic breath. 

But we find here much more than breadth of 
scheme or courage of design to praise. The main 
career of Hannibal down to the battle of the 
Metaurus is traced scene after scene in large and 
vigorous outline; and for the action and reaction 
of dramatic intrigue we have the simpler epic in- 
terest of the harmonious succession of great sep- 
arate events. Throughout the exposition of this 
vast subject, as act upon act of that heroic and 
tragic poem, the life of one man weighed against 
the world and found all but able to overweigh it, 



John NichoVs "HannihaV 3 147 

is unrolled before us on the scroll of historic song, 
there is a high spirit and ardour of thought which 
sustains the scheme of the poet, and holds on 
steadily through all change of time and place, all 
diversity of incident and effect, toward the accom- 
plishment of his general aim. The worth of a 
poem of this kind cannot of course be gauged by 
any choice of excerpts; if it could, that worth 
would be little indeed. For in this mixed kind of 
art something more and other than poetic fancy 
or even than high imagination is requisite for suc- 
cess; the prime necessity is that shaping force of 
intellect which can grasp and mould its subject 
without strain and without relaxation. This 
power of composition is here always notable. 
Simple as is the structure of a "chronicle history," 
it calls for no less exercise of this rare and noble 
gift than is needed for the manipulation of an 
elaborate plot or fiction. It is in this, the most 
important point of all, that we find the work done 
most deserving of our praise. 

On a stage so vast and crowded, in a scheme 
embracing so many years and agents, the greater 
number of the multitudinous actors who figure in 
turn before us cannot of course be expected to 
show any marked degree of elaboration in the out- 
line of their various lineaments ; but however slight 
or swift in handling, the touch of the draughtsman 
is never indistinct or feeble ; Roman and Carthagin- 
ian, wise man and unwise, heroic and unheroic, 
pass each on his way with some recognisable and 
rememberable sign of identity. Upon one figure 



148 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

alone besides that of his hero the author has ex- 
pended all his care and power. Of this one ideal 
character the conception is admirable, and worthy 
of the hand of a great poet ; nor does the execution 
of the design fail, as it proceeds, to repay our hope 
and interest at starting. Here as elsewhere the 
requisite hurry of action and conflict of crowding 
circumstance forbid any subtle or elaborate analy- 
sis of detail; but in a few scenes and with a few 
strokes the figure of Fulvia stands before us com- 
plete. From the slight and straggling traditions 
of Hannibal's luxurious entanglement in Capua, 
Mr. Nichol has taken occasion to create a fresh 
and memorable type of character, and give colour 
and variety to the austere and martial action of 
his poem by an episode of no inharmonious pas- 
sion. To no vulgar "harlot" such as Pliny speaks 
of has he permitted his hero to bow down. The 
revolted Roman maiden who casts her life into the 
arms of her country's enemy is a mistress not un- 
worthy of Hannibal. From the first fiery glimpse 
of her active and passionate spirit to the last cry 
of triumph which acclaims the consummation of 
her love in death, we find no default or flaw in the 
noble conception of her creator. At her coming 
into the poem 

"She makes a golden tumult in the house 
Like morning on the hills;" 

and the resolute consistency which maintains and 
vindicates her passion and her freedom is through- 
out at once natural and heroic. 

We have not time to enlarge further on the 



John NichoVs "Hannibal 33 149 

scope or the details of the poem, on its merits of 
character and language, its qualities of thought 
and emotion. We will only refer, for one instance 
among others of clear and vigorous description, 
to the account of the passage of the Alps — > 

"peaks that rose in storm 
To hold the stars, or catch the morn, or keep 
The evening with a splendour of regret; 

On dawn-swept heights the war-cry of the winds, 
The wet wrath round the steaming battlements, 
From which the sun leapt upward, like a sword 
Drawn from its scabbard;" 

and for one example of not less simple or less 
forcible drawing of character, to the sketch of 
Archimedes, slain in the mid passion and pos- 
session of science; to which the homage here studi- 
ously paid by the dramatist who pauses on his 
rapid way to do it reverence will recall the 
honoured name of that father to whose memory 
the poem is inscribed. As an offering worthy of 
such a name, we receive with all welcome this 
latest accession to the English school of historic 
drama. 



IX 



A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 

BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN 



A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 

BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN 

N. B. — This bibliography aims to include a 
record of all important editions of Swinburne's 
books and also of all his contributions to 
periodical literature which have not been subse- 
quently reprinted. It is hoped, but hardly ex- 
pected, that this list is complete. At any rate, it 
is much more full than the bibliographies of Shep- 
herd and Nicoll and Wise. For a more detailed 
description of bibliographical rarities, the reader 
is referred to the latter bibliography. — E. J. O. 

1857. 
(1). William Congreve. The Imperial Dic- 
tionary of Universal Biography. Edited 
by John Francis Waller, LL.D. Lon- 
don, 1857. p. 979. 
1858. 
(2). Undergraduate Papers. Oxford and 
London: 1857-1858. 

(Swinburne contributed the following 

four articles to this volume. 

(a.) The Early English Dramatists. — 

No. 1. Marlow and Webster, pp. 

7-15. 

(b.) Queen Yseult. Canto i. ff Of the 

153 



154 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

birth of Sir Tristram, and how he voy- 
aged into Ireland" pp. 4-1-50. 
(c.) The Monomaniac's Tragedy, and 

Other Poems, pp. 97-102. 
(d.) Church Imperialism. pp. 134- 
137.) 

1860. 
(3). The Queen Mother. Rosamond. Two 
Plays. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Basil Montagu Pick- 
ering. 1860. 
(4). The Queen Mother and Rosamond. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Edward Moxon and Co. 1860. 

1862. 

(5). Mr. George Meredith's Modern Love. 
(A Letter to the Editor of the Specta- 
tor.) The Spectator. June 7, 1862. 
Vol. xxxv. pp. 632-633. 
Reprinted in the present volume. 
(6). Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs Du Mai. 
The Spectator. Sept. 6, 1862. Vol. 
xxxv. pp. 998-1000. 
Reprinted in the present volume. 

1864. 
(7). Dead Love. By Algernon C. Swinburne. 
London: John W. Parker and Son, 
West Strand. 1864. 

Reprinted from Once-a-Weeh, vol. 
vii. pp. 432-434, October, 1862, where 
it was accompanied by a drawing by M. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 155 

J. Lawless. The story is reprinted in 
the present volume. 
(8). The Children of the Chapel. A Tale. By 
the Author of The Chorister Brothers, 
Mark Dennis, etc. [Mrs. Disney 
Leith.] London: 1864. 

From this volume we have extracted 
"A Pilgrimage of Pleasure" as being 
almost certainly the work of Swinburne. 
In this opinion we follow Mr. Thomas 
B. Mosher, and in large measure the 
authority of Messrs. Nicoll and Wise. 
1865. 
(9). Atalanta in Calydon. A Tragedy. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Edward Moxon and Co. 1865. 
Small 4to. 
(10). Ditto. Second Edition. Same year. 

Post 8vo. 
(11). Chastelard. A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Edward 
Moxon and Co. 1865. 
(12). Gentle Spring. (Sonnet). The Royal 
Academy Catalogue. 1865. p. 20. 
1866. 
(13). A Selection from the Works of Lord 
Byron. Edited and Prefaced by Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. London: Ed- 
ward Moxon and Co. 1866. 
(14). The Queen Mother and Rosamond. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
John Camden Hotten. 1866. 



156 . A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

(15). Chastelard. A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: John 
Camden Hotten. 1866. 

(16). Laus Veneris. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Edward Moxon 
and Co. 1866. 

(17). Poems and Ballads. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Edward 
Moxon and Co. 1866. 

(18). Poems and Ballads. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: John 
Camden Hotten. 1866. 

Hotten published a second edition of 
the book in the same year,, and it is dif- 
ficult to detect it from the first edition. 

(19). Laus Veneris, and other Poems and Bal- 
lads. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
New York: Carleton, Publisher. 

MDCCCLXVI. 

(20). Notes on Poems and Reviews. By Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. London: John 
Camden Hotten. 1866. 

(21). Ditto. Second edition. Same title-page. 
1866. 

(22). Cleopatra. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: John Camden Hotten. 
1866. 

Reprinted from the Cornhill Maga- 
zine, but not included in any authorised 
edition of the poet's works. Reprinted 
in "Felise: A Book of Lyrics." Port- 
land: T. B. Mosher. 1894. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 157 

(23). Speech in Reply to the Toast The Imag- 
inative Literature of England. Report 
of the 77th Anniversary Dinner of the 
Royal Literary Fund. 1866. p. 27. 

1867. 

(24). Dolores. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: John Camden Hotten. 
1867. 

(25). A Song of Italy. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: John Camden 
Hotten. 1867. 

(26). An Appeal to England against the Exe- 
cution of the Condemned Fenians. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Man- 
chester: Reprinted from the Morning 
Star. 1867. 

1868. 

(27). William Blake. A Critical Essay. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
John Camden Hotten. 1868. 

(28). Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 
1868. Part I. By William Michael 
Rossetti. Part II. By Algernon C. 
Swinburne. London: John Camden 
Hotten. 1868. 

(29). Siena. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: John Camden Hotten. 
1868. 

Only six copies were printed. There 
was a second or spurious edition printed 
with the same title-page in the same year. 



158 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

1869. 

(30). Christabel and the Lyrical and Imagina- 
tive Poems of S. T. Coleridge. Ar- 
ranged and Introduced by Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Sampson 
Low. 1869. 

(31). Editors sub-edited. The Athenaeum. 
Oct. 9, 1869. p. 463. 

(32) . Victor Hugo and English Anonyms. The 
Daily Telegraph. Oct. 22, 1869. p. 5. 
col. 6. 

1870. 

(33). Ode on the Proclamation of the French 
Republic. September 4th, 1870. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
F. S. Ellis. 1870. 
1871. 

(34). Songs Before Sunrise. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: F. S. 
Ellis. 1871. 

(35). Pleasure: A Holiday Book of Prose and 
Verse. London: Henry S. King and 
Co. 1871. 

Includes Tristram and Iseult: Pre- 
lude of an Unfinished Poem. By Swin- 
burne, pp. 4-5-52. 

(36). Simeon Solomon: Notes on his Vision of 
Love, and other Studies. The Dark 
Blue. Vol. i. pp. 568-577. July, 1871. 
Reprinted in the present volume. 
1872. 

(37). Under the Microscope. By Algernon 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 159 

Charles Swinburne. London: D. 

White. 1872. 

(38). Mr. John Nichol's Hannibal: A Historical 
Drama. Fortnightly Review, n.s. Vol. 
xii. pp. 751-753. December, 1872. 
Reprinted in the present volume. 

(39). Le Tombeau de Theophile Gautier. 
Paris: Alphonse Lemerre. mdccci> 
xxiii. 

Swinburne contributed sice poems, five 
of which have been reprinted. The 
sixth consists of 56 Greek verses on pp. 
170-172. 

(40). Chastelard. Tragodie von Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. Deutsch von Oskar 
Horn. Bremen, 1873. Verlag von T. 
Kiihtmann's Buchhandlung. 

(41). Mr. Swinburne's Sonnets in The Exam- 
iner. The Spectator. May 31, 1873. 
Vol. xlvi. p. 697. 

(42). Christianity and Imperialism. The Ex- 
aminer. June 7, 1873. pp. 585-586. 
1874. 

(43). Bothwell. A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1874. 
1875. 

(44). George Chapman. Works . . . Poems 
and Minor Translations. With an in- 
troduction by Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Chatto and Windus. 
1875. 



160 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

(45). George Chapman: A Critical Essay. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Chatto and Windus. 1875. 

(46). Bothwell. A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. In Two Volumes. 
London: Chatto and Windus. 1875. 

(47). Songs of Two Nations. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. I. A Song of 
Italy. II. Ode on the Proclamation 
of the French Republic. III. Dirae. 
London: Chatto and Windus. 1875. 

(48). Essays and Studies. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1875. 

(49). Auguste Vacquerie. Par Swinburne. 
(In French). Paris: Michel Levy, 
Freres. 1875. 

(50). Atalanta in Calydon. A Tragedy. A 
New Edition. London: Chatto and 
Windus. 1875. 

(51). An Unknown Poet. The Fortnightly 
Review, n. s. Vol. xvii. p. 217. Febru- 
ary, 1875. 
Reprinted in the present volume. 

(52). Mr. Swinburne and his Critics. The 
Examiner. April 10, 1875. p. 408. 

(53). The Suppression of Vice. The Athen- 
ffium. May 29, 1875. p. 720. 

(54). Epitaph on a Slanderer. (Verses.) The 
Examiner. Nov. 20, 1875. p. 1304. 

(55). The Devil's Due. The Examiner. Dec. 
11, 1875. p. 1388. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 161 

(56). Beaumont and Fletcher. Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. Ninth Edition. Vol. iii. 
Edinburgh: A. and C. Black. 1875. 
pp. 469-474. 

1876. 

(57). Erechtheus. A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1876. 

(58). Note of an English Republican on the 
Muscovite Crusade. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1876. 
"(59). Charles Jeremiah Wells. Joseph and His 
Brethren. A Dramatic Poem. With 
an Introduction by Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Chatto and Win- 
dus. 1876. 

This introduction is reprinted with 
changes and omissions from an article 
in the Fortnightly Review of the pre- 
ceding year. In the present volume^ 
these omissions are restored. 

(60). A Discovery. The Athenaeum. Jan. 15, 
1876. p. 87. 

(61). "King Henry VIIL," and the Ordeal by 
Metre. The Academy. Jan. 15, 1876. 
Vol. ix. pp. 53-55. 

(62). Sir Henry Taylor's Lyrics. The Acad- 
emy. Jan. 29, 1876. Vol. ix. p. 98. 

(63). Charles Lamb's Letters to Godwin. The 
Athenaeum. May 13, 1876. p. 664. 

(64). Mr. Forman's Edition of Shelley. The 



162 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Academy. Nov. 25, 1876. Vol. x. 
p. 520. 

(65). George Chapman. The Encyclopaedia 
Britannica. Ninth Edition. Edin- 
burgh: A. and C. Black. 1876. Vol. 
v. pp. 396-397. 

1877. 

(66). A Note on Charlotte Bronte. By Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. London: 
Chatto and Windus. 1877. 

(67). Edgar Allan Poe: A Memorial Volume. 
By Sara Sigourney Bice. Baltimore: 
Turnbull Brothers. 1877. 

Contains in facsimile a letter ad- 
dressed by Mr. Swinburne to Miss Pice. 

(68) . The "Ode to a Nightingale." The Athen- 
aeum. Jan. 27, 1877. p. 117. 

(69). "Poems and Ballads." The Athenaeum. 
Mar. 10, 1877. pp. 319-320. 

(70). "Poems and Ballads." The Athenaeum. 
Mar. 24, 1877. p. 383. 

(71). "The Court of Love." The Athenaeum. 
Apr. 14, 1877. pp. 481-482. 

(72). Note on a Question of the Hour. The 
Athenaeum. June 16, 1877. p. 768. 

(73). Note on the words "irremeable" and "per- 
durable." Pall Mall Gazette. July. 
15, 1877. 

(74). Last Words of the "Agamemnon." The 
Athenaeum. Nov. 10, 1877. p. 597. 
1878. 

(75). Poems and Ballads. By Algernon 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 163 



(76 

(77 

(78 
(79 

(80 

(81 

(82 

(83 
(84 



Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1878. 

Poems and Ballads. Second Series. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Chatto and Windus. 1878. 

Atalanta in Calydon. Eine Tragodie von 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Deutsch 
von Albrecht Graf Wickenburg. Wien: 
Verlag von L. Rosner. 1878. 

"Love, Death, and Reputation." The 
Athenaeum. Feb. 2, 1878. p. 156. 

Note on a Passage of Shelley. The 
Athenaeum. Feb. 9, 1878. p. 188. 
1880. 

A Study of Shakespeare. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1880. 

Songs of the Springtides. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1880. 

Specimens of Modern Poets. The Hepta- 
logia, or The Seven against Sense. A 
Cap with Seven Bells. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1880. 

Studies in Song. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Chatto and Win- 
dus. 1880. 

William Collins. The English Poets. 
Selections, with Critical Introductions 
by various writers, edited by Thomas 
Humphry Ward. London: Macmillan 
and Co. 1880. Vol. iii. p. 278. 



164 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

(85). Mr. Swinburne's "Study of Shakes- 
peare." The Academy. Jan. 10, 1880. 
Vol. xvii. p. 28. 

(86). Letter to the Editor. The Academy. 
July 3, 1880. Vol. xviii. p. 9. 

(87). On a Passage in Lord Beaconsfield's 
"Endymion." (In French.) The Pall 
Mall Gazette. Dec. 6, 1880. 

1881. 

(88). Mr. Swinburne's New Volume. The 
Academy. Jan. 15, 1881. Vol. xix. 
p. 46. 

(89). Thomas Carlyle. (In French.) Le 
Rappel. Paris. 19 Fevrier, 1881. 

(90). Seven Years Old. (Poem.) The Athen- 
aeum. Aug. 20, 1881. pp. 238-239. 

(91). Disgust: A Dramatic Monologue. Fort- 
nightly Review, n. s. vol. xxx. pp. 715- 
717. December, 1881. 

A parody on Tennyson's poem, "De- 
spair: A Dramatic Monologue." Not 
reprinted by the author. 

(92). Mary Stuart. A Tragedy. By Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. London: 
Chatto and Windus. 1881. 

1882. 

(93). Ode a la Statue de Victor Hugo. Par 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Traduc- 
tion de Tola Dorian. Paris: Alphonse 
Lemerre. 1882. 

(94). Tristram of Lyonesse, and Other Poems. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 165 

By Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Chatto and Windus. 1882. 
1883. 
(95). A Century of Roundels. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1883. 
(96). A Coincidence. The Athenamm. Mar. 

10, 1883. p. 314. 
(97). La Question Irlandaise. Le Rappel. 

Paris. 26 Mars, 1883. 
(98). Letter to the Editor. Pall Mall Gazette. 

Dec. 28, 1883. p. 3. 
(99). Les Cenci. Drame de Shelley. Traduc- 
tion de Tola Dorian, avec Preface de 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Paris: 
Alphonse Lemerre. 1883. 
1884. 
(100). A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
London: Chatto and Windus, 1884. 
(101). Steele or Congreve? (Four letters.) 
The Spectator. Mar. 29, Apr. 5, 12, 
26, 1884. Vol. lvii. pp. 411, 441, 486, 
550. 

1885. 
(102). Marino Faliero. A Tragedy. By Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London; 
Chatto and Windus. 1885. 
1886. 
(103). A Study of Victor Hugo. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1886. 



166 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

(104). Miscellanies. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Chatto and Windus. 
1886. 

(105). Sultan Stork and Other Stories and 
Sketches by William Makepeace Thack- 
eray. Now first collected. London: 
George Redway. 1887. [1886.] 

Includes two letters from Swinburne 
on "Thackeray and Frasefs Magazine' 3 
printed in the introduction. 

(106). The Best Hundred Books. (Two let- 
ters.) The Pall Mall Gazette. Jan. 
26, 27, 1886. 

(107). The Literary Record of the Quarterly 
Review. (Two letters.) The Athen- 
aeum. Nov. 6, 20, 1886. pp. 600-601, 
671. 

1887. 

(108). Locrine: A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1887. 

(109). A Word for the Navy. A Poem by Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Charles Ottley, Landon, and Co. 1887. 

(110). A Word for the Navy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: George 
Redway. mdccclxxxvii. 

(111). Thomas Middleton. Plays. Edited by 
Havelock Ellis. With an introduction 
by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Vizetelly and Co. 1887. 

(112). The Question, mdccclxxxvii. A poem 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 167 

by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Charles Ottley, London, and Co. 
1887. 

The poem has not been reprinted. 

(113). The Jubilee, mdccclxxxviii. By Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Fortnightly Review. I. August, 1887. 

(114). Gathered Songs. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Charles Ottley, 
Landon, and Co. 1887. 

(115). Fine Passages in Verse and Prose: 
Selected by Living Men of Letters. 
Fortnightly Review. I. August, 1887, 
n. s. vol. xlii. pp. 297-316. II. Septem- 
ber, 1887. n. s. vol. xlii. pp. 430-454. 

Swinburne contributed two letters to 
this symposium which are printed on 
pages 316 and 4-^7. 

(116). A Retrospect. (Letter to The Times.) 
The Times. May 6, 1887. p. 4. col. 5. 

(117). Unionism and Crime. The St. James's 
Gazette. May 6, 1887. p. 5. 

(118). Mazzini and the Union. (Letter to The 
Times). The Times. May 11, 1887, 
p. 14, col. 5. 

(119). Note on Epipsychidion. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. Epipsychidion. By 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, with an introduc- 
tion by the Rev. Stopford Brooke, 
M. A. 1887. pp. lxi-lxvi. 

(120). Philip Bourke Marston. (Sonnet). 

The Athenamm. Feb. 19, 1887. p. 257. 



168 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

(121). May, 1885. (Poem). The Athemeum. 
Dec. 17, 1887. p. 825. 
1888. 

(122). Unpublished Verses. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. 1866. 

There are two printings of these 
verses. The date 1866 is, of course, not 
the date of publication. 
1889. 

(123). Poems and Ballads. Third Series. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Chatto and Windus. 1889. 

(124). A Study of Ben Jonson. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1889. 

(125). The Bride's Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Printed 
Privately. 1889. 

(126). The Ballad of Dead Men's Bay. By Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Printed Privately. 1889. 

(127). The Brothers. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Printed Pri- 
vately. 1889. 

(128). Philip Massinger. The Fortnightly Re- 
view, n.s. vol. xlvi. pp. 1-23. July, 
1889. 

(129). Victor Hugo and Mr. Swinburne. The 
Pall Mall Gazette. Sept. 24, 1889. 
p. 4. 

Contains a letter from Swinburne to 
the Rev. H. B. Haweis. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 169 

(130). The Ballad of Truthful Charles. The St. 
James's Gazette, vol. xix. No. 2844. 
July 18, 1889. p. 7. 
1890. 

(131). A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of 
Robert Browning. By A. C. Swin- 
burne. London: Printed for Private 
Circulation, mdcccxc. 

(132). C. A. (sic) Swinburne. Siena. Tradu- 
zione di Salomone Menasci. Firenzo 
Tipografia Co-operativa. 1890. 

1891. 

(133). Gabriel Mourey. Poemes et Ballades de 
A. C. Swinburne. Notes sur Swinburne 
par Guy de Maupassant. Paris: Nou- 
velle Librairie Parisienne. Albert 
Savine. 1891. 

(134). New Year's Eve, 1899. (Sonnet.) The 
Athenaeum. Aug. 15, 1891. p. 224. 

(135). Social Verse. The Forum, vol. xii. pp. 
169-185. October, 1891. (Reprinted 
in The Forum. Vol. xliii. pp. 129-144. 
February, 1910.) 
1892. 

(136). The Sisters. A Tragedy. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 
and Windus. 1892. 

(137). Richard Brome. The Fortnightly Re- 
view. April, 1892, n.s. vol. li. pp. 
500-507. 

(138). The New Terror. The Fortnightly Re- 



170 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

view. Dec, 1892. n.s. vol. lii. pp. 
830-833. 

(139). The Centenary of Shelley. (Sonnet.) 
The Athenaeum. July 30, 1892. p. 
159. 

1893. 

(140). The Ballad of Bulgarie. By Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Printed for Private Circulation. 

MDCCCXCIII. 

The poem has not been reprinted. 

(141). Grace Darling. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Printed only for 
Private Circulation. 1893. 

(142). The Palace of Pan. (Poem.) The 
Nineteenth Century. Vol. xxxiv. pp. 
501-503. October, 1893. 
1894. 

(143). Astrophel and Other Poems. By Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. London: 
Chatto and Windus. 1894. 

(144). Studies in Prose and Poetry. By Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Chatto and Windus, 1894. 

(145). Felise: A Book of Lyrics. Chosen from 
the Works of Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. Portland: T. B. Mosher. 
1894. 

This volume contains work hitherto 
uncollected. 

1895. 

(146). Laus Veneris. Poeme de Swinburne tra- 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 171 

duit par Francis Viele-Griflin. Paris: 
Edition du Mercure de France. 

MDCCCXCV. 

The translation is in French prose. 
1896. 

(147) . The Tale of Balen. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Chatto and Win- 
dus. 1896. 

(148). One Penny. A Word for the Navy. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: George Redway. mdcccxcvi. 

(149). Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth 
Century: Contributions towards a Lit- 
erary History of the Period. Edited 
by W. Robertson Nicoll, M.A., LL.D., 
and Thomas J. Wise. London: Hod- 
der and Stoughton. 1896. Vol. ii. pp. 
291-374. A Contribution to the Bibli- 
ography of the Writings of Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. 

Reprints various fragments otherwise 
practically inaccessible. 

(150). Letter to Mr. C. K. Shorter. The 
Sketch. Apr. 1, 1896. 

(151). The Golden Age. The Daily Chronicle. 
March 31, 1896, p. 3. 

(152). "The Well at the World's End." The 
Nineteenth Century. November, 1896. 
Vol. xl, pp. 759-760. 

1897. 

(153). For Greece and Crete. (Poem.) The 



172 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Nineteenth Century. Vol. xli. pp. 337- 

338. March, 1897. 
(154). John Day. The Nineteenth Century. 

October, 1897. Vol. xlii. pp. 549-559. 
1899. 
(155). Rosamond, Queen of the Lombards. A 

Tragedy. London: Chatto and Win- 

dus. 1899. 
(156). After the Verdict, September, 1899. 

(Sonnet). The Nineteenth Century. 

Vol. xlvi. p. 521. October, 1899. 
1901. 
(157). A Year's Letters. By Algernon Charles 

Swinburne. Portland: T. B. Mosher. 

1901. 
(158). 1901. (Sonnet.) The Saturday Review. 

Jan. 5, 1901. Vol. xci. p. 1. 

1902. 

(159). Charles Dickens. Quarterly Review. 

July, 1902. Vol. cxcvi. pp. 20-39. 
Reprinted in the present volume. 
1904. 
(160). A Channel Passage and Other Poems. 

By Algernon Charles Swinburne. Sec- 
ond edition. London: Chatto and Win- 

dus. 1904. 
(161). Poems. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 

London: Chatto and Windus. Six vol- 
umes. 1904. 

1905. 
(162). Love's Cross-Currents. A Year's Let- 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 173 

ters. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
London: Chatto and Windus. 1905. 
(163). Czar! Louis XVI! Adsit Omen! (Son- 
net). Pall Mall Gazette. (Reprinted 
in The Living Age, Feb. 11, 1905. Vol. 
ccxliv. p. 380.) 

1906. 
(164). Tragedies. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Chatto and Windus. 
Five volumes. 1906. 

1907. 
(165). Memorial Verses on the Death of Karl 
Blind. The Fortnightly Review, n. s. 
vol. lxxxii. pp. 353-356. September, 
1907. 

1908. 

(166). The Age of Shakespeare. By Algernon 

Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 

and Windus. 1908. 
(167). The Duke of Gandia. By Algernon 

Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto 

and Windus. 1908. 

1909. 

(168). Three Plays of Shakespeare. By Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. New York 
and London: Harper and Bros. 1909. 

(169). Shakespeare. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Henry Frowde. 1909. 

(170). The Marriage of Mona Lisa. By Alger- 
non Charles Swinburne. London: Pri- 



174 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

vately Printed for Thomas J. Wise. 
1909. 

Seven copies printed. 

(171). The Portrait. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Privately Printed 
for Thomas J. Wise. 1909. 

(172). The Chronicle of Fredegond. By Al- 
gernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Privately Printed for Thomas J. Wise. 
1909. 

(173). Margaret. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Privately Printed for 
Thomas J. Wise. 1909. 

(174). Lord Scales. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Privately Printed for 
Thomas J. Wise. 1909. 
Twenty copies printed. 

(175). Lord Soules. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. With a Preface by Theo- 
dore Watts-Dunton. London: Pri- 
vately Printed for Thomas J. Wise. 
1909. 
Seven copies printed. 

(176). Border Ballads. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Privately Printed 
for Thomas J. Wise. 1909. 

(177). To W. T. W. D. (Written upon the 
Fly-leaf of a copy of "Sympathy and 
Other Poems," by S. J. Pratt: 8vo. 
1807.) London: Privately Printed for 
Thomas J. Wise. 1909. 
Twenty copies printed. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 175 

1909 

(178). In the Twilight. Poem by Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Only ten copies printed. Written in 
1867. 

(179) . Burd Margaret. A Ballad by a Borderer. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Privately Printed for T. J. Wise. 
1909. 

Twenty copies printed. 

(180). The Portrait. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. With an Introduction by 
Theodore Watts-Dunton. London : Pri- 
vately Printed for T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Twenty copies printed of this prose 
romance. 

(181). The Chronicle of Queen Fredegond. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: 
Privately Printed for T. J. Wise. 
1909. 

Twenty copies printed of this prose 
romance. 

(182). Border Ballads. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Privately Printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Includes Three Ballads: "Earl Rob- 
ert" "Duriesdyke" and "Westland 
Well." Twenty copies printed. 

(183). Letters to T. J. Wise. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Privately 
printed for T. J. Wise. 1909. 



176 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Twenty copies printed. Includes an 
Unpublished Song From a Cancelled 
Passage in " Chastelard." 

(184). Ode to Mazzini. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Privately printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Twenty copies printed. Probably 
written in 1857. 

(185). M. Prudhomme at the International Ex- 
hibition. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. With a Preface by Edmund 
Gosse. London: Privately printed for 
T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Twenty copies of this prose essay 
printed. Written in 1862. 

(186). Of Liberty and Loyalty. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. With a Preface by 
Edmund Gosse. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Twenty copies of this prose essay 
printed. Written in 1866. 

(187). The Saviour of Society. Two Sonnets and 
a Controversy. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. With a Preface by 
Edmund Gosse. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1909. 

Twenty Copies Printed. The Son- 
nets are reprinted from the Examiner 
of May 17, 1873, and several letters are 
also reprinted from the Examiner and 
Spectator. The sonnets and letters are 
all listed above, 9x>. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 177 

(188). The Worm of Spindlestonheugh. A Bal- 
lad by a Borderer. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. With a Preface 
by Edmund Gosse. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1909. 
Twenty Copies Printed. 
(189) . Letters on the Works of George Chapman. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
With a Preface by Edmund Gosse. 
London: Privately Printed for T. J. 
Wise. 1909. 
Letters to Richard Heme Shepherd. 
Twenty copies printed. 
(190). From Literary London. (Special Corre- 
spondence of the Dial.) By Clement 
K. Shorter. The Dial. December 16, 
1909. Vol. xlvii. pp. 504-505. 

Includes two hitherto unpublished 
poems by Swinburne. 
1910 
(191). The Ballade of Villon and Fat Madge. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
With a Preface by Edmund Gosse. 
London: Privately printed for T. J. 
Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies printed. 
(192). A Criminal Case. A Sketch by Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies of this prose tale 
printed. 
(193). A Record of Friendship. By Algernon 



178 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

Charles Swinburne. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1910. 

Recollections of Rossetti. Written in 
1882. Twenty copies printed. 

(194) . The Ballade of Truthful Charles and Other 
Poems. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Privately printed for 
T. J. Wise. 1910. 

Ten poems, nine of which appeared 
previously in periodicals, and are listed 
above. Twenty copies printed. 

(195). Letters on William Morris, Omar Khay- 
yam, and Other Subjects of Interest. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. Lon- 
don: Privately Printed for T. J. Wise. 
1910. 

Twenty copies of these nine letters 
printed. 

(196). Letters Chiefly Concerning Edgar Allan 
Poe. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
With a Preface by John H. Ingram. 
London: Privately Printed for T. J. 
Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies printed of these eleven 
letters to John H. Ingram. 

(197). Letters on the Elizabethan Dramatists. 
By Algernon Charles Swinburne. With 
a Preface and Notes by Edmund Gosse. 
London: Privately Printed for T. J. 
Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies printed of these ten let- 
ters to A. H. Bullen. 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 179 

(198). Letters to Thomas Purnell and Other 
Correspondents. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Privately Printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies printed of these ten let- 
ters addressed to Thomas Purnell, A. H. 
Bullen, and Philip Bourke Mars ton. 

(199). Letters to A. H. Bullen. By Algernon 
Charles Swinburne. London: Privately 
Printed for T. J. Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies of these sixteen letters 
printed. 

(200). Letters to John Churton Collins. By 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. With a 
Preface by Edmund Gosse. London: 
Privately Printed for T. J. Wise. 1910. 
Twenty copies of these twelve letters 
printed. 

(201). Letters to Edmund Gosse. Series I. 
1867-1875. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. With a Preface by Edmund 
Gosse. London: Privately printed for 
T. J. Wise. 1910. 

Twenty copies of these ten letters 
printed. 

(202). The Earlier Plays of Beaumont and 
Fletcher. The North American Re- 
view. May, 1910. Vol. cxci. pp. 612- 
625. 

1911 

(203). Letters to Edmund Gosse. Series II. 
1876-1877. By Algernon Charles Swin- 



180 A Pilgrimage of Pleasure 

burne. London: Privately Printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1911. 

Twenty copies of these seventeen let- 
ters printed. 
(204). Letters to Edmund Gosse. Series III. 
1878-1880. By Algernon Charles 

Swinburne. London: Privately Printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1911. 

Twenty copies of these twelve letters 
printed. 
(205). Letters to Edmund Gosse. Series IV. 
1881-1885. By Algernon Charles 
Swinburne. London: Privately Printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1911. 

Twenty copies of these eighteen letters 
printed. 
(206). Letters to Edmund Gosse. Series V. 
1886-1907. By Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. London: Privately Printed 
for T. J. Wise. 1911. 

Twenty copies of these nineteen letters 
printed. For a description of this and 
the other pamphlets printed by Thomas 
J. Wise, I am indebted to Mr. Clement 
K. Shortens article in the Dial listed 
above,, and especially to Mr. George H. 
Sargenfs check-list published in the 
Boston Evening Transcript, March, 
WIS. 

1913. 
(207). Vera: A Play in MS. 
(208) . Border Ballads by Algernon Charles Swin- 



Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne 181 

burne. Edited by T. J. Wise. Boston: 
Bibliophile Society. 1913. 
(209). A Pilgrimage of Pleasure: Essays and 
Studies by Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne. With a Bibliography by Ed- 
ward J. O'Brien. Boston: Richard G. 
Badger. 1913. 







1^ « • ■ ,M* >> 







si • • * < 





'^ •i^nL' 











■* *0 







V 




g* ^ 

















/\ 



^°* 






v. 



£v 








* 4- 



X ^ 

.0 V ^3> 



•bV 




- ^o^ ;. 















• r ^» ^ V *rff 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 



, * 4 o >' 

•' ^°° ^V **rfv»* **• °q, ^^.v;*^^© PreservationTechnologies °o 

ty" a • • • > "^> \X - t « o "%-v O^" A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 



L 







111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



~ *.^T'* A 




9*/^* % & ***♦ 







<^ 




6^ *o. *?^;T* a 






k^°^ *$<M&* a- * 7 *, -WMS 3 ? £°+ 






% 



f^V. ''**d* • 



<^o v 



'bV 



^°-* 









"oK 








* *# ^ *^** * 



«J>. *. B o' V 










VV 



r V^T." A 



/ /% - 











i0 V, 









^°^ 

^a> * 















HuHkra 



1 



mm 



JBHH 

si ■ - 

HM Ml IB Mmfl 

in 



■ 

H 




■ ■ 

■ 






■i 

■ 



